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This paper engages with an ethics of memory representation in Jim Sheridan’s film The Secret Scripture. The camera follows Rose Clear McNulty’s memories at the expense of cinematic realism and reality representation. The film which is adapted based on the same named novel The Secret Scripture deals with the issue of The Magdalene Laundry for women who were labeled as ‘fallen’ by their families or society. Since the release of Magdalene Sisters which portraits the reality of the Magdalene Asylums the issue has received social interest in the form of recognition, compensation or apology. Eventually news media and films have accelerated the victims’ typical images and grotesque representation of scenes. From this social condition Jim Sheridan reflects on these aspects of representation because they are locked in the past and prevent people from harboring the possibility and hope of the future obsessing with the reenactment of reality. Therefore the director takes on the difficulty of representing ‘unrepresentable’ memories along the main character’s first person point of view; the heroine suppresses a traumatic event and invents completely different memories from it. As a matter of fact, he resists a phenomenon that is close to a sort of obsession with the reenactment of reality because films that pursue literally reality do not always result in truth. The director Sheridan provides an alternative narrative in the film and an opportunity to turn from the traumatic experience to the process of recovery. Furthermore, this brings back to power to films’ original function, imagination.
