44/40
Cillian Murphy is a fan of the film’s original novel writer Claire Keegan
In 1985 devoted father Bill Furlong discovers disturbing secrets kept by the local convent and uncovers shocking truths of his own.. He remembers reading her novel "Foster" on a train and having to pull his hoodie over his face because he was crying.. Eileen Furlong: If you want to get on in this life, there are things you have to ignore.. Featured in 60 Minutes: Crisis in the Red Sea /Fake Electors/Finding Cillian Murphy (2024).
One of the women celebrating was telling us of her childhood at the hands of the nuns in the 1970s
A friend of mine used to own a big gay bar in Dublin, and I recall being in it the day that marriage was legalized in Eire. It was a ghastly story of women who hadn’t an ounce of compassion between them all, and this film picks up that cudgel and swings it squarely at what it is little better than a religious equivalent of a Dickensian workhouse. The story is told from the perspective of local coal merchant "Bill" (Cillian Murphy) who lives with his wife and five daughters in a small town in Co. Wexford.
If you want a "peaceable life" then you’d best leave well alone
Nobody has much money and some are reduced to gathering wood from the forest floor to heat their homes. By comparison, his family are quite well off and with Christmas looming all are anticipating a good family time. He supplies the local convent-cum-orphanage where the unwed girls of the community are deposited when they get in the family way, and it’s here that he encounters a young lass locked in the coal shed. Freezing and terrified, he wonders how she got herself trapped in there – and that’s where the story starts to focus on not just the inhumanity that prevailed, but on the internecine, web-like, tendrils of a church that broke no resistance or interference.
Can he, though?
He is frequently reminded of his own childhood. One of tragedy, kindness, a hot water bottle and a jigsaw puzzle. "Bill" is a troubled man who has much to mull over as his conscience refuses to accept the societal compromises even his wife (Eileen Walsh) might prefer he adopt in the face of what he has now witnessed. This is definitely a less-is-more film, with an effective paucity of dialogue and a sense of oppressiveness that frequently overwhelms with it’s simplicity.
Not an easy watch, but well worth ninety minutes of your time
The setting demonstrates a degree of menace way more poignantly than any horror film, but horror this is – and an illustration of cruelty in it’s most devastatingly subtle form. Murphy shines here, his performance allows his character to take us with him as we can observe a scenario unfold that might not have been out of place in 1885 – but in 1985?
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