Cillian Murphy said the Magdalene Laundry incident continues to be treated as a “collective trauma” for the Irish people.
The 47-year-old Oscar and BAFTA nominee stars in Small Things Like These, which is based on Irish author Claire Keegan’s novel of the same name, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. It depicts a father discovering how mothers and babies are treated at a convent in New Ross. , County Wexford.
Murphy, the Irish star known for the period crime drama Peaky Blinders and Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster Oppenheimer, attended a press conference for his new film on Thursday at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival.
Asked how he felt that Ireland was still dealing with the shame of the time, when women claimed to have been held against their will by the Catholic Church and forced to give up their children, he said: Ta. Truly…well qualified to represent the nation.
“But I think it was a collective trauma, especially for people of a certain age, and I think we’re still processing it.
“And I think art can really help heal those wounds, and I think this book certainly did that. It was a huge bestseller in Ireland and everyone seemed to read it.”
“And I think the kind of irony of this book is that it’s a Christian man trying to do a Christian thing in a dysfunctional Christian society.
“And it raised a lot of questions about complicity, silence, shame, all of those things.
“But I really think that the duty of art is not to answer those questions, (but) to kind of inspire those questions. Maybe it’s more absorbing than an academic report or a government report. It’s easy.”
Murphy, who plays Bill Furlong, a coal and timber merchant who learns the secrets of the local community in December 1985, has been vocal about women’s issues in Ireland in the past.
The Cork-born actor has supported repealing the Eighth Amendment to Ireland’s constitution ahead of the 2018 referendum, when people voted in favor of the amendment to make abortion legal.
He also narrated a podcast series about survivors of single-parent families in 2020 and is a patron of the UNESCO Center for Research on Children and Families at the University of Galway, which runs a project on the issue.
Producer and Hollywood star Matt Damon also told reporters that adapting Keegan for the film was a “very easy decision” for him and Ben Affleck’s production company Artists Equity.
he said: “To reiterate what Killian said, that’s one of the things that attracted us to this work, is that great artists…were dealing with this trauma.
“So, for us, you know, on our side, it was a very simple proposition. It was to create an environment where they could do this, work, explore these things. It was about facilitating and really getting them out of the way.”
Damon and Murphy previously co-starred in 2023’s Oppenheimer, which depicts the rise and fall of J. Robert Oppenheimer, known as the father of the atomic bomb.
The cast of Small Things Like These includes Belfast-born Ciaran Hinds, British actress Emily Watson, star of Angela’s Ashes, and Northern Irish actress Michelle Fairley, star of Game of Thrones. Cork actress Eileen Walsh, who starred in “The Magdalene Sisters,” is also reportedly included.
Since the 18th century, nuns operated laundries across Ireland until the last facility in Sean McDermott Street, Dublin, closed in 1996.
Originally intended for “degenerate women,” the use of laundries expanded during the 20th century to include non-pregnant women and women coming from orphanages.
The Irish facility was notorious for the abuse many women suffered there in the 1990s, when unmarked graves were discovered at one site. The issue prompted a formal national apology in 2013.
The Good Shepherd Magdalene Laundry in New Ross closed in 1967 and a memorial to the women was placed near St. Stephen’s Cemetery in Irishtown, according to the Magdalene Justice Research Organization. .
The subject was brought to the big screen in 2002 in director Peter Mullan’s award-winning The Magdalene Sisters.
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