Academy Award-winning actor Cillian Murphy is making headlines for yet another profound and evocative performance – this time in the film adaptation of Claire Keegan’s 2021 Booker Prize-shortlisted story Small Things Like These. Reportedly scheduled for a theatrical release in India on November 8, the historical drama film is directed by Tim Mielants. Speaking during a recent radio broadcast, the actor said the film is an ‘incredibly complex tale’ about a ‘different’ Ireland.
Also starring Eileen Walsh, Michelle Fairley, Emily Watson, Clare Dunne and Helen Behan, Small Things Like These follows a Wexford man, coal merchant Bill Furlong, who exposes a terrible act at the local Magdalene Laundry. The story is set in 1985. Cillian – who won the ‘Best Actor in a Leading Role’ award at Oscars 2024 for his performance in Christopher Nolan-directed Oppenheimer – plays the lead character in Small Things Like These.
Speaking about the movie’s plot, the actor told the Vinny & Cate show on BBC Radio Ulster. “It is a very seemingly simple story but it is an incredibly complex tale. If you think about Ireland then, the Kerry babies were in ‘84, the moving statues were in ‘85, there was no abortion and no divorce and maybe not even contraception so it was a completely different landscape. We are deliberately kind of pushing that so it feels like it could be in the ‘50s or the ‘60s and it’s only when you drop in Come On Eileen or something and you realise we’re actually in 1985. The movie shows you how this country has changed since then and these laundries were in operation until 1996, which is kind of hard to fathom.”
In the story, women and girls who fall pregnant outside marriage were deliberately sent away to the laundries. Those involved in the act included the girls’ families, welfare authorities, police, clergymen, as well as church organisations and the courts.
