Cillian Murphy films a ‘complex story’ about a different Ireland

Oscar-winning actor Cillian Murphy has said his new film Small Things Like These shows an Ireland that was “a different country”.

Based on Claire Keegan’s 2021 Booker shortlisted story, the film tells the story of a Wexford man, coal merchant Bill Furlong, who discovers a terrible scene at the local Magdalene Laundry.

Women and girls who became pregnant outside of marriage were sent to the laundries by their families, welfare agencies, courts, police, clergy, and church organizations.

Murphy, who won the Best Actor Oscar for starring in Oppenheimer, plays Furlong in the 1985-set drama.

His character, a father of five daughters, comes across a girl locked up in a monastery and the story continues from there.

“It’s a seemingly simple story, but it’s an incredibly complex story,” he told the Vinny & Cate show on BBC Radio Ulster.

“If you think about Ireland, the Kerry babies were in ’84, the moving pictures were in ’85, there was no abortion and no divorce and maybe even no contraception, so it was a very different landscape,” he said.

“We consciously push that so that it feels like it could be in the ’50s or ’60s and it’s not until you walk in, come on, Eileen or something, that you realize we’re actually in 1985.

Murphy said he was surprised the film was called “historic” but added: “It shows how this country has changed since then and these laundries were in operation until 1996, which is quite difficult to fathom.”

From 1922 to that point, at least 10,500 women spent time in a mother-and-baby home.

The last institution in Northern Ireland did not close until 1990.

Murphy’s co-star Eileen Walsh said she hoped the film would spark conversations.

“There’s so much subtext to it, I think three people could watch the movie and have three different opinions about how the movie ends, or about who has empathy at any point,” she said.

“The movie ends just as the drama is about to begin, so I think everyone will come up with a different version of what the beginning of the next drama is.”

That’s possible listen to the full interview with Cillian Murphy, Eileen Walsh and Emily Watson on BBC Sounds.