“The glue is trust and that’s the thing that holds it all together. We know how to bring out the best in each other,” Cillian Murphy says of working with the same people over time, as with “Small Things Like These.”
(Ryan Pfluger / For The Times)
LONDON — Cillian Murphy describes himself as a “serial collaborator.” It’s what drew the Irish actor to join Christopher Nolan on “Oppenheimer,” their sixth time working together, and it’s why he teamed up with screenwriter Enda Walsh and director Tim Mielants on “Small Things Like These.” The film, an adaptation of Claire Keegan’s 2021 novel, reflects Murphy’s desire to work hand-in-hand with people he trusts.
“You get the richest work from that,” says Murphy, who kicked off his career onstage in Walsh’s play “Disco Pigs” in 1996. “The glue is trust and that’s the thing that holds it all together. We know how to bring out the best in each other. With this, there was a beautiful atmosphere around the whole thing and we had a great sense of responsibility toward the book, trying to get that right.”
Murphy had been looking to make something with Mielants, who directed him in the third season of “Peaky Blinders,” and it was the actor’s wife, Yvonne McGuinness, who suggested Keegan’s book. Murphy was so compelled by the story that he pitched it to Matt Damon on the set of “Oppenheimer,” leading to Damon’s production company, Artists Equity, coming on board. It wasn’t necessarily Murphy’s plan to make something closer to home after “Oppenheimer,” for which he won the lead actor Oscar, but it felt so right that he and Alan Moloney launched their own production company, Big Things Films, to produce as well.
“My plan is nonexistent, really,” Murphy says. “What’s the next good story? Who’s the next good collaborator? That led to making this, which led to the establishment of our company, and that’s been very instructive in terms of the sort of work we want to do. It’s story- and script-led, and the budget or scale is secondary.”
The historical drama, set in New Ross, Ireland, in 1985, centers on a quiet, kind-hearted family man who struggles with whether he should confront the wrongdoings at the local convent, run by the corrupt Sister Mary (Emily Watson). Murphy plays Bill Furlong, a coal merchant with his own tumultuous history, with complexity and a simmering internal fire. Murphy has very few lines and commands most of the film with his expressions.
“For me, a lot of acting is withholding,” he notes. “Withdrawing and leaving space for the audience to do the work. Letting the audience interpret the emotions that you’re transmitting nonverbally. My favorite film acting is acting in repose, acting in reflection. Because there’s an awful lot of verbosity in film and in television, and it’s fine, but I love just seeing human beings exist and deal with stuff. In Ireland, there’s an archetype of a deep-thinking, silent, intelligent man who doesn’t have the tools to express himself because at that time talking about yourself or your emotions or your difficulties was verboten. So these men retreated into themselves.”
“For me, a lot of acting is withholding,” says Cillian Murphy. “Withdrawing and leaving space for the audience to do the work.”
(Edna Bowe / Lionsgate)
Mielants was interested in the way “what’s not said in the movie is even louder than the dialogue itself.” The director, who used the film as a way to refract a personal experience with grief, saw Bill as a man who was slowly beginning to erupt emotionally. “That’s something Cillian really understands,” Mielants says. “He’s great because you can choose to go really deep into the emotional colors and you know at the end of the day everything will work.”
“Small Things Like These” was shot over five weeks in March in the actual town of New Ross using all real locations. Bill’s home, which he shares with his wife (another longtime Murphy collaborator, Eileen Walsh) and their daughters, was repurposed from an empty house. The story’s Magdalene laundry was shot outside an existing convent. Although the narrative is sparse, the film is thematically “tectonic,” as Murphy says. The representation of one of the infamous laundries, institutions run by the Catholic order to house so-called fallen women, was part of the appeal for him.
“They were in operation until 1996,” Murphy says. “The thing you have to realize about Ireland is that there was a collective cognitive dissonance happening. There was a huge knowing, but not knowing. When this film was set I was around 9, so I had a foot in both worlds — that deeply religious, conservative Ireland and then the progressive, liberal country that we have now. But everybody of a certain generation has a story about these laundries. It was a lot darker than what we explored in the film.”
A key scene comes toward the end, when Sister Mary invites Bill in and they have what appears to be a mundane discussion but one that is underlaid with a threat. Mielants wanted to make it “slightly bigger than life, but also very grounded at the same time” to underscore its importance. Watson says she was struck by Bill — and Murphy’s approach to him.
“He’s just got this vibration happening in him that he can’t stop and he’s going to explode,” the actor says. “And Cillian doesn’t really do anything. He doesn’t really say very much or show very much, but you can see it rising in him. It’s astonishing. And it’s a testament to the kind of man he is that this [story] is where he chooses to shine his light.”
Murphy, who recently collaborated with Mielants again on the mental health-themed “Steve” as producer and star, sees “Small Things Like These” as what he calls a “gentle provocation.”
“The beauty of the story is that it really begins at the end of the movie when it goes to black and there’s that dedication,” Murphy says. “What happens next? That’s why people have responded so well, I think, to the film. After the credits roll, people just sit there, and then the conversations begin.”