30/11
And the children who were taken from them
Story
In 1985, devoted Father Bill Furlong uncovers disturbing secrets held by a local convent and reveals shocking truths of his own. Cillian Murphy is a fan of the film’s original novelist, Claire Keegan. He remembers reading her novel "Foster" on the train and having to pull his hood over his face because he was crying. Eileen Furlong: If you want to get ahead in this life, there are things you have to ignore.. Dedicated to the more than 56,000 young women sent to Magdalene institutions for "penance and rehabilitation" from 1922 to 1998.
60 Minutes: Crisis at the Red Sea/False Electors/Finding Cillian Murphy (2024)
It took me a couple of days to process this film. To everyone who asked me "Did you like it?" I couldn’t give an answer. I didn’t like it and I didn’t like it for a simple reason, it’s such an immersive, such a meditative experience that I just internalized it. There were moments when I realized I wasn’t breathing for a few seconds during scenes, other moments I found myself smiling, some moments I felt a heaviness in my chest. It’s Ireland in the dark ages, when you start watching this film you might think you’re in the 50s but you’re actually in the mid-80s, people were lucky if they had a job and a warm place to sleep.
Small village, close-minded, everyone knows everything and anyone
The Catholic Church ran the show and was so deeply ingrained in the institutions that they controlled education and therefore shaped the culture of the time. So we have this story, which is unfortunately true and takes place in New Ross, Ireland. It’s a small village, the film does a great job of getting into the depressing atmosphere, even showing the main character Bill Furlong doing very repetitive work tasks at the beginning, it’s all part of getting you into the mood. Perception is crucial, show your best side, hide the bad, take note, don’t think outside the box. And repeat.
It is perfectly shot to bring out the dark and gloomy to match the heavy tone of the story
We meet Bill Furlong in the middle of a nervous breakdown, he was the child of a young mother without a father, who was lucky enough to be raised by the woman his mother worked for. He has a difficult childhood because despite being raised by a woman of money, he doesn’t belong to that world and times are not kind to a fatherless child. He tries to reckon with his past when one day while delivering coal to the village monastery, he finds a girl in a cold shed who was left there overnight. His struggle between personal interests and right action is intense, he has 5 daughters and the nuns control the education and therefore the future prospects of his talented girls whom he loves and has worked his whole life to ensure, and doing the right thing, morally and ethically also adding that his mother could have been one of these girls if she had not been lucky enough to be taken in by a kind person. He is forced to look on from the sidelines, to ignore other people who are suffering for his own family, but when you look from the other side, there is someone who understands the pain, someone who has been there and knows what it means, the gaze from the other side becomes that much more difficult.
The scene with Eileen in the living room is such an incredible example: she listens but ignores, in fact she doesn’t want to know
I thought the use of blurry lenses was incredible and key to the plot, when you see something you don’t want to see, you want to. block. Eileen Walsh is absolutely phenomenal at portraying this woman who for a while you think she’s a coward but then you realize she’s scared, she’s doing it for her family, how can you blame her.
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