Cillian Murphy explains why Small Things Like These character isn’t a hero
The Oppenheimer and Peaky Blinders star tells RadioTimes.com that Bill Furlong is "going through some deep, deep, emotional reckoning".
Cillian Murphy's new movie Small Things Like These might be on a much smaller scale than his Oscar-winning role in Oppenheimer but it's no less impactful a piece of work.
The 1985-set film is based on Claire Keegan's acclaimed novel of the same name and focuses on Murphy's Bill Furlong, a man running a small coal business in County Wicklow who wrestles with whether to intervene when he spots the mistreatment of a young woman in the then still operational Magdalene Laundries.
Throughout the film – which also sees Bill reflect on his own childhood – the character comes across as a fundamentally decent man, but speaking exclusively to RadioTimes.com, Murphy explained why it wasn't right to view him as a hero.
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“I think it's a curious look at it," he said of the film's perspective. "Because it has been dealt with in films before, this time in Irish history. So it's a book written by a woman about a man – it's a male protagonist – but it's actually a story about women, really. So it's a very interesting take that way."
He added that he had heard Keegan explain on a podcast her own reasons why she didn't see the character of Bill as a hero.
"She sees him as somebody who's kind of... who's unraveling," he explained. "Who's kind of going through some deep, deep, emotional kind of reckoning, and he happens upon this girl, and that sort of precipitates this act and this gesture and this… but it's kind of this whole other engine that's going on, which is primarily, I think, about grief and loss."
Read more:
- Cillian Murphy on "genius" of ambiguous Small Things Like These ending
- Cillian Murphy was intense in Small Things Like These role: 'He was very quiet – simmering'
He continued: "And a lot of it is about his love for his daughters and his wife and so it's very, very complex. It isn't all just about the church, even though that's the thing that colours everything and informs everything in that town.
"We shot in New Ross [and] when you go there, there's just, like, steeples everywhere. It feels like a garrison town. It's just steeped in it there."
Murphy's co-star Emily Watson had previously explained to RadioTimes.com how Murphy's passion for the project – on which he is also a producer – came across on set.
"When I encountered him on set, he was utterly immersed in Bill Furlong," she said. "So he was very, very quiet, like a simmering, you know, unexploded bomb, in a way – didn't really say very much, was utterly in it."
Small Things Like These is now showing in UK cinemas.
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Authors
Patrick Cremona is the Senior Film Writer at Radio Times, and looks after all the latest film releases both in cinemas and on streaming. He has been with the website since October 2019, and in that time has interviewed a host of big name stars and reviewed a diverse range of movies.
