TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

Palaest recommended

ShangLuda Admirable film.

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

velezr-898-188713 Great story of love and hope. The actors were perfect for their part. This is a great story of love. Love is truth, everything else is smoke. A movie to encourage those that have lost and hope to found love again.

CineMuseFilms It's easy to get absorbed in a story without recognising the bigger picture that frames the narrative. To describe The Secret Scripture (2017) as a woman's diary of life in a mental hospital masks the darker narrative of horror perpetrated by the Catholic Church. Based on a 2008 novel of the same name, the film is part of the recent wave of disclosures about appalling misdeeds committed in the name of holiness across various parts of the world.Set in Ireland from the early 1930s, the story traces the life of Roseanne McNulty who was falsely incarcerated in an Irish mental hospital owned by the Catholic Church. After more than 40 years as a patient, Rose must be discharged or moved elsewhere when the hospital closes. New psychiatrist William Grene (Eric Bana) discovers that she is mentally sharp and has meticulously recorded her life story across the pages of an old bible. In a complex series of flashbacks the elderly Rose (Vanessa Redgrave) recounts how, as a feisty young woman (played by Rooney Mara), she had fallen in love with Michael McNulty (Jack Reynor) believed by locals to be a British sympathiser. The new Father Gaunt (Theo James) takes more than a pastoral interest in Rose and tries to stop the affair. When Rose becomes pregnant and Michael is embroiled in the Irish Troubles, she is hunted down by local vigilantes for harbouring the suspected sympathiser. Enraged by the affair, Father Gaunt certifies her to be suffering from nymphomania and she is subjected to electric shock treatment and other abuses over four decades.Great filming locations and stellar acting performances by Redgrave and Mara do little to save this film from its complicated and fractured web of episodic flashbacks. The constant shifts of time, place, and people is at the cost of narrative coherence and the contrived finale defies beiief. The narrow expressive repertoire of Eric Bana casts a pall of indifference over Rose's existence as if she were a specimen in a hospital test tube. When it is revealed she is much more than that, Bana strains to emote with warmth or empathy and leaves you wondering why he was cast in that role. The transitions between the younger and older Rose are increasingly disjointed as the entire ensemble drifts towards its soap-operatic conclusion.Uncertain direction and messy narrative means it is easy to lose sight of the larger story of injustice suffered by people like Rose at the hands of the Catholic Church. The moral perversion of Father Gaunt and the Church's obsession to punish victims is left unexamined. Despite excellent filming and a well-crafted atmosphere of claustrophobic confinement, this film struggles to rise above a mediocre melodrama.More reviews https://cinemusefilms.com

adonis98-743-186503 Roseanne McNulty must vacate the soon-to-be demolished mental institution in Roscommon, Ireland that she's called home for over 50 years. The hospital's psychiatrist, Dr. William Grene, is called in to assess her condition. He finds himself intrigued by Roseanne's seemingly inscrutable rituals and tics, and her fierce attachment to her Bible, which she has over the decades transformed into a palimpsest of scripture, drawings, and cryptic diary entries. As Grene delves deeper into Roseanne's past, we see her as a young woman, whose charisma proves seductive. We learn that she moved to Sligo to work in her aunt's café, fell in love with a dashing fighter pilot), and that a local priest fell tragically in love with her. Rooney Mara in my opinion is a very overrated actress and this film shows it she's really wooden and boring in most of her films with a few exceptions of course such as Side Effects or Lion. The rest of the cast doesn't do much either for example Eric Bana who just goes from one place to another doing nothing for the entire movie plus i didn't feel any emotion coming from the cast or their characters in general if you're a fan of Mara you might enjoy it but for everyone else? Skip it. (0/10)

phd_travel This is a sweeping romantic drama that goes back and forth in time between the present with an old woman in an asylum and her younger self in "neutral" Ireland during WW2. Even though there is a clearly fictional quality to the story, the themes of the Irish conflict feel very real.Rooney Mara is eminently watchable. You can really believe her beauty is enough to drive the men in the small town to distraction. She really acts well here - wish she had more good roles.Theo James plays the villain, a lecherous priest. His face is actually quite suited to the cruel character - he should play villains more in the future. Eric Bana should be on screen more. Vanessa Redgrave wouldn't act in a mediocre movie. One fault is a lot of non Irish actors speaking with accents - need subtitles sometimes.This movie is saved by a good ending. A nice old fashioned ending that is feel good and doesn't leave you hanging.