As producer and lead actor, Cillian Murphy has brought to the screen a piercingly painful and sad story with a very literary intensity, juxtaposing the detail of the present with flashback memories of the past. It is about Ireland’s notorious Magdalene Laundries: the church’s homes for unwed mothers who were made to work in an atmosphere of wretchedness and shame and had their babies taken away and sold to foster parents. Enda Walsh has adapted the much admired novel by Claire Keegan and the director is Tim Mielants.
This subdued but absorbing and eventful film is rather different from Peter Mullan’s extravagant The Magdalene Sisters – which also featured Eileen Walsh in its cast – and different also from Stephen Frears’ bittersweet dramedy Philomena. Murphy shows us once again his sightless stare of fear and pain, as the witness to something terrible not just in the real world but within himself. He plays Bill, a coalman in County Wexford in the early 80s; a soft-spoken, thoughtful man who has built up a good business through years of hard work, though money worries are never far way. He is married to Eileen (Walsh), and they have many daughters whose education comes courtesy of the church and whose future weddings will doubtless cause more worry and expense.
