It's the inevitable question that follows Oscar celebrations. What’s next? And after Cillian Murphy’s win for Oppenheimer earlier this year, everybody was asking how he'd follow up his typically subtle performance set against an epic canvas. The film version of Peaky Blinders was no secret, but surely there would be something before that …. There is. It's smaller and quieter, yet it packs just as big a punch as the role that defines his career so far.
Murphy goes back to familiar territory in Small Things Like These, but that's no indictment of either him or director Tim Mielants' film, an adaptation of Claire Keegan's novella. In a grey 1980s County Wexford town, he's Bill Furlong, fuel merchant and devoted father of five girls. By the standards of the community, he's done well for himself but what none of them know is where he started. His mother gave birth to him "out of wedlock", something not just frowned upon but openly condemned.
