Watch The Secret Scripture For Free

To me, this movie is perfection.

Good movie but grossly overrated

best movie i've ever seen.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

The extensive character development and superb cast yield an amazing result. The actors have done their profession a great service. This is why I watch movies. A rare find on Amazon Prime. Which this movie and learn what a movie is suppose to be.

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

An elderly woman with an enigmatic past pines her days away in an asylum, until a doctor begins investigating her case and ultimately gives them both a second chance at life in The Secret Scripture (2016). It is a romantic tale filmed on location in Ireland and is one of those films audiences seemed to like but critics panned. Beautiful cinematography and emotional depth masks an otherwise a ridiculous plot.The Secret Scripture is based on a novel of the same name by Sebastian Barry, author of A Long Long Way (2005). It was released in Canada and the U.K. in 2016 but came to the U.S. in October of this year. It was adapted for the screen and directed by Jim Sheridan, who also directed My Left Foot (1989) and The Boxer (1997). Both Sebastian Barry and Jim Sheridan were born in Dublin and have focused their careers on highlighting the Irish experience.The film centers on Roseanne McNulty (Vanessa Redgrave), an elderly woman in a mental institution who allegedly murdered her child. Dr. William Grene (Eric Bana) comes to evaluate Rose to see if she is sane enough to live on her own, because the institution is being remodeled into a spa. Dr. Grene becomes fascinated with her life story after discovering a journal she's kept, written on the pages of a Bible.As a young woman, Rose (Rooney Mara) lives in Belfast with her sweetheart, Michael McNulty (Jack Reynor). He leaves to join the British air force during World War 2. She moves to the Irish countryside to escape the German bombing raids, only to run afoul of local conventions. After being exiled from her aunt's cafe to an isolated cottage, Michael just so happens to be shot down in her backyard and she hides him from Irish partisans.The local priest, Father Gaunt (Theo James), is smitten with Rose and becomes enraged when he sees her with Michael. He recommends she be confined in the local mental hospital. Michael and Rose marry, but no one believes her because he fled the Irish partisans and was later killed. I guess the church where they got married didn't keep a registry.After breaking out of the asylum, she swims away only to be washed ashore, where she gives birth and it's implied she smashes her newborn with a rock. In a twist ending, however, this recollection of events is revealed to be inaccurate and in fact Dr. Grene is Rose's long-lost son, who was taken shortly after birth. Gaunt, now an Archbishop, was the man who requested Grene go to the asylum.Eric Bana, who played Hector in Troy (2004) and Nero in Star Trek (2009), is a bright spot in the film. His interaction with veteran actress Vanessa Redgrave saves it from being truly unbearable. Together, they add a touch of humanity in sea of melancholy, sullen, and otherwise cold and reptilian characters.It's a tearjerker for sure, but The Secret Scripture is one step away from a Lifetime Original Movie. It's one of those silly romantic tales filled with unlikely coincidences, picturesque scenery, and a taciturn heroine who for some reason drives every man she meets wild. I'm not sure if the movie is deliberately anti-Catholic, but it plays on old stereotypes of the Church silencing rebellious women in mental hospitals and covering up scandal. Definitely meant for the wine and chocolate crowd.

I'm not going to explain the story, that has been done in other reviews. What I do want to say is thisThe end of this movie brought tears to my eyes, and literally almost broke me, because I have experienced something similar. No, I didn't live in a mental institution all my life, but the pain and heartache is the same, it's excruciating, at the loss of a lover, a family member (including pets), and especially the loss of your child. At the same time the movie brought pain, it also brought healing.Many movies can be confusing at first, and some stay that way until the very end. This was not confusing at all, you just needed to follow along, and know that eventually that everything will be clear and fit into place.An awesome movie, exceptional acting, and the music is beautiful, especially the end title "The Cry Inside," written by Brian Byrne and performed by Kelly Clarkson. It was absolutely gorgeous, a masterpiece. Listening to it, and paying attention to the lyrics, is what finally broke me...I sobbed"The Cry Inside" never goes away. Rose Kennedy explained it as follows ~"It has been said, 'time heals all wounds,' I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone."