40/37
In 1985, devout priest Bill Furlong uncovers disturbing secrets held by the local convent and discovers his own shocking truths. Cillian Murphy is a fan of the film’s original writer, Claire Keegan. He remembers reading her novel “Foster” on a train and having to cover his face with his hood 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 who were sent to the Magdalena institutions for “penance and rehabilitation” between 1922 and 1998. And to the children who were taken from them. Appears in 60 Minutes: Red Sea Crisis/False Voters/Finding Cillian Murphy (2024). A friend of mine owned a large gay bar in Dublin, and I remember being in it the day marriage was legalized in Ireland. One of the women celebrating the festival told us about her childhood spent in the hands of nuns in the 1970s. It was a horrific story of women who had no compassion for each other, and this film takes that story and throws it straight into what is little more than the religious equivalent of a Dickensian asylum. 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 village in Co. Donegal. No one has much money and some are reduced to collecting firewood from the forest floor to heat their homes. By comparison, his family is quite wealthy and with Christmas approaching, everyone is eager for some quality family time. He supplies the local convent-orphanage where the unmarried girls of the community are deposited when they are in the family’s way, and it is there that he finds a young girl locked in the coal bin. Frozen and terrified, he wonders how he got trapped there, and it is then that the story begins to focus not only on the inhumanity that prevailed, but on the inner workings of a church that tolerated no resistance or interference. If you want a “peaceful life,” then it is best to leave things as they are. Can he, though? He often thinks back to his own childhood. A tragedy, kindness, a hot water bottle, and a puzzle. “Bill” is a troubled man who has a lot on his mind, as his conscience refuses to accept the social compromises that even his wife (Eileen Walsh) would prefer him to make in the face of what he has now witnessed. This is definitely a less is more film, with an effective lack of dialogue and a sense of oppression that is often overwhelming in its simplicity. The setting conveys a degree of menace far more moving than any horror film, but this is horror and an illustration of cruelty at its most devastating and subtle. Murphy shines here, his performance allowing his character to carry us along with him as we all watch a situation unfold that might not be out of place in 1885, but in 1985? It’s not an easy film to watch, but it’s well worth spending ninety minutes on.
