Cillian Murphy calls Ireland's Magdalene Laundries scandal a ...
Learning about the abuses of the church in the “dysfunctional Christian society” of 1980s Ireland amounted to a “collective trauma” that has still not been fully processed, actor Cillian Murphy said as a new film set against the backdrop of the Magdalene Laundries scandal premiered at the Berlin film festival.
In Small Things Like These, the Oppenheimer star plays Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man who accidentally becomes aware of abuse happening at the local convent in New Ross, southwest Co Wexford, Ireland.
As a punishment for having sex outside of marriage, women in Ireland were for more than two centuries sent to restrictive church-run workhouses, where they carried out agonising unpaid labour and were shut off from society against their will.
The Magdalene Laundries system went unchallenged until 1993 when unmarked graves containing the remains of 155 women were discovered in the backyard of one of the institutions.
“I do think that it was a collective trauma, particularly for people of a certain age,” Murphy said about the impact of the revelations, at a press conference on the eve of the film’s world premiere. “I think that we’re still processing that.”
Directed by Belgian filmmaker Tim Mielants, Small Things Like These is based on the short novel of the same name by Claire Keegan, which was a bestseller in Ireland and beyond when it was published in 2020.
Actress Emily Watson, Zara Devlin, actor Cillian Murphy, and actress Eileen Walsh, from left, stand together during a photo call for the movie 'Small Things Like These' at the International Film Festival, Berlinale, in Berlin. Picture: AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi“It seemed like everybody read it,” said Murphy, adding that art could be a useful “balm for that wound”.
“I think the irony of the book is that it’s a Christian man trying to act Christian in a dysfunctional Christian society. And it asks a lot of questions about publicity and silence and shame, all of those things. But I really don’t think the duty of art is to answer those questions, it’s to talk to them. And maybe it’s easier to absorb than an academic report, or a political report.”
The film, which is the first Irish production to open the Berlin Film Festival, was adapted for screen by Irish playwright Enda Walsh, and produced by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s Artists Equity studio.
“I was out in the New Mexican desert with Cillian. I was sitting across from him watching what he was doing in Oppenheimer,” Damon said during a press conference in Berlin.
“I had already called Ben and told him what I was witnessing and how incredible it was. A couple of days later Cillian told me, ‘I have my next movie I really want to do.’ And I said, ‘We are starting a studio. Can we be a part of it?’”
Cork actors Eileen Walsh and Cillian Murphy posed together at the Small Things Like These photocalls during the 74th Berlinale International Film Festival in Berlin, almost 30 years after they first performed together as students in Disco Pigs, the play which launched their careers.
Enda Walsh, the director in 1996, wrote the screenplay for the new film, based on Claire Keegan’s novel of the same name.
The pair star in the film alongside Emily Watson, Michelle Fairley and Irish actors Ciarán Hinds and Zara Devlin.
- The Guardian
