There is a numbing sameness about the many documentaries out there about historical trauma, whether they are telling stories of casualties of war, survivors of abuse, or the descendants of either. Exercises in oral and visual history, these films follow strong narrative conventions, perhaps modelled on criminal trials: opening arguments, methodical presentation of evidence, climaxing with quavering testimony from victims.
To be frank, Margo Harkin’s documentary reviewing the horrors of Ireland’s mother-and-baby institutions – essentially state- and church-run factories churning out children for adoption, shame and misery – doesn’t swerve far from the template outlined above. But to extend the legal metaphor, she assembles the arguments with the skill of a high-court prosecutor. With forensic precision, it starts with the wider view of how a patriarchal theological obsession with controlling women’s bodies, along with the political context, allowed “industrial” schools, Magdalene laundries and mother-and-baby homes to flourish. Run often by nuns who lived in comfort upstairs while the “girls” – unmarried mothers sent away to give birth in secrecy – lived in squalor in the basement, these so-called homes have only recently had their horrors revealed. The opening story is, of course, the 796 infants and children who died at Bon Secours mother and baby home in Tuam, Galway, and were buried in pits discovered only when the land was being repurposed for development.
The focus, and the horror, spreads from there, as Harkin expands by interviewing journalists, politicians, legal scholars and historians, but also poets such as Jessica Traynor, who read pieces about the pain of such places in the ruins that remain. We hear from sons and daughters who lived with mothers that survived these homes and are still searching for siblings who remain unaccounted for, and of course many survivors themselves.
While the latter’s stories are as chilling and nauseating as it gets, it’s notable how few tears or raised voices there are. Instead, these women – and it’s mostly women we meet – tell their stories with clenched, clear voices, still seething with rage but rehearsed down into ritual. The big emoting goes on in composer Deirdre Gribbin’s string-heavy score that’s powerfully melancholy but just astringent enough to keep things in check. Altogether, this is a nearly immaculate, exemplary piece of documentary film-making.
• Stolen is released on 3 November in UK and Ireland in cinemas.
