Trailing clouds of glory from his Oscar turn in Oppenheimer, Cillian Murphy gives a sensitive performance as taciturn Wexford coal seller Bill Furlong. In the course of his deliveries to a convent he encounters a distressed girl, Sarah (Zarah Devlin), who’s clearly being mistreated.
Her suffering calls up painful memories of his own youth. He’s the child of an unmarried mother who could have ended up like Sarah were it not for the intervention of a kindly Protestant woman.
When Furlong tells his wife Eileen (Eileen Walsh) about Sarah she isn’t inclined to do anything about it. “It’s not our business,” she says, “Stay on the right side of people. If you want to get on in this life, there are things you have to ignore.”
Though we’re in 1985, a culture of silence still surrounds matters like this. As another character in the film puts it, “Keep the bad dog with you and the good dog won’t bite.”
But Furlong continues to brood. He’s like a dormant volcano waiting to erupt. The film carries a sense of ominousness in its every tense, intense frame. He washes his hands like Lady Macbeth to try and work off his anger.
The film is very well made but it will be a hard watch for readers of this paper. There’s a sense of ‘good Protestant/bad Catholic’ about its ‘woke’ approach.
The nuns are presented in an unremittingly cruel light. In the case of the ‘sheep in wolf’s clothing’ Mother Superior of the convent (an almost unrecognisable Emily Watson) there’s even bribery involved. She presents the cash-strapped Furlong with a ‘gift’ to ease him into the imminent Christmas season.
He has five daughters in his humble but happy home. If he ‘rescues’ Sarah he may be in danger of compromising the education Eileen is anticipating for them in the convent.
“The nuns have a finger in every pie,” she tells him when he suggests exposing Sarah’s plight. There’s only a wall, she points out, separating “that place” from the school.
The film is shot in an almost crepuscular darkness, its sepia-tinged frames resonant of the period. This is captured excellently by director Tim Mielants. Murphy also conveys Furlong’s awkwardness – and helplessness – convincingly.
Enda Walsh’s script has a minimalist effectiveness: “The whole world looks pretty under snow.” “Didn’t Christmas come in quickly all the same?” The faces and fashions of the characters are faithful to the time.
But is the mood?
Were things really this conspiratorial in 1985?