Tim Mielants, a self-described “weird guy from Belgium,” is not the first filmmaker you’d expect to get the call to direct Small Things Like These, a film soaked in the culture and history of Ireland.
The film shares its subject matter with Peter Mullan’s 2002 drama The Magdalene Sisters, which exposed the brutal treatment of the tens of thousands of women held in Magdalene Laundries. Small Things Like These shifts the focus to the world outside the asylum, and to the complicity of the community that allowed the abuse to continue.
Mielants, who first worked with Murphy on British crime series Peaky Blinders, says it was this focus on “a man in midlife trying to deal with grief and struggling to do the right thing” that “made me think I might be able to tell this story.”
Small Things Like These was produced by Murphy’s Big Things Films, Mielants’ Wilder Films and Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s production company Artists Equity. FilmNation Entertainment is handling international sales.
Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter ahead of the film’s world premiere as the opening night film of the 74th Berlinale, Mielants talks about reuniting with his Peaky Blinders star, why the film is so personal for him, and creating new forms of onscreen masculinity.
Getting Cillian Murphy’s first film after Oppenheimer is a huge coup, but what was the development of this project like? How long had you been talking about it with Cillian?
Mielants Me and Cillian wanted to work with each other for a while, we really wanted to get back together [after Peaky Blinders]. We were looking for themes and stories we wanted to tell. This was pre-Oppenheimer. And we talked about ideas, and he and his wife came to me with [Claire Keegan’s] book. It was something, thematically, that I really understood, from a personal level. So I was totally up for it. We started writing it and developing it. Then Oppenheimer came along. And Cillian was doing that and I was doing another movie [Belgian period drama Wil]. While making Oppenheimer, he met Matt Damon, and they really had a good relationship. And Matt Damon said he loved the project and got on board [with Artists Equity]. So, post-Oppenheimer, all the dots came together.
What was it about this story, which is a very particularly Irish story, and the characters that spoke to you?
Almost everything I’ve done so far, also with my own features, the common theme is grief. I actually think it goes back to a pain I witnessed when I was very young. I lost my brother when I was very young, and it was hard to cope with it. I watched my parents going through that, the kind of time-delayed grief, postponed grief, that comes up so much later. That was something in the main storyline [of Small Things Like These] that I thought I’d really love to share and dig into with Cillian. It was something I really understood. As far as I am concerned, that’s the engine of the story. Of course, everything revolves around the Catholic Church, and that is very important. I’ve got a Roman Catholic background, and here in Belgium, we have a lot of similar stories. But really it was this idea of a man in midlife trying to deal with grief and struggling to do the right thing, something I unfortunately understand quite well. That was the kind of cocktail where I felt, OK, I think I might be able to tell this story.
Peter Mullan told the story of the Magdalene asylums in The Magdalene Sisters back in 2002, but your approach is very different, because it is framed from the outside, through a middle-aged man struggling with his own grief. I assume it was this approach that appealed to Cillian as well?
Yeah, exactly. And that was also the story of the book. We stayed very close to the narrative of the book, where it was like this boy and this man at the center of the story, and the struggle to cope with grief. In a certain way it’s a story of how dealing with grief makes you stronger. Small Things Like These is also about moral courage when you live in an autocracy. I’d just finished a movie, Wil, which is now on Netflix, and tells a story in a totally different way. That is set during World War II, but what happens is similar to what happens in the village here because everyone sees what is happening to the girls but nobody says anything, nobody speaks up against the Church.
I always ask myself the question, What would I do in those circumstances? I’ve been exploring it through this angle and that angle, and it was interesting to explore it here from the point of view of someone who is recognizing the injustice but struggling to do something against it.
Was Mullan’s film a reference point for you in making this film?
I watched it decades ago, but I never went back to it. On purpose. I wanted to have a fresh eye.
Because I was wondering if the casting of Eileen Walsh, who was one of the girls in Magdalene Sisters, and plays Murphy’s wife in your movie, was a tip of the hat. I thought you might be using that casting as a kind of cinematic depiction of generational trauma, an actress who goes through the trauma in the first film and is trying to turn away from it in the second.
Oh that’s a great idea. I wish I’d thought about that. But I didn’t. It’s a bit too late now.
It’s yours if you want it. Use it in future interviews.
Thank you, I’ll do that.
How would you describe Cillian’s character, Bill Furlong?
I think I’d say he has an existential emptiness combined with extreme vulnerability. He’s very quiet, he doesn’t say much. He’s the kind of person who is trying to protect himself, who is very vulnerable and tries to keep everything inside. That’s what I played around with. For the film’s structure, I framed it around the five stages of grief. That’s how I portrayed the arc of his depression, which we see in his eyes throughout his performance.
And does that work in practical terms, when you have to get an actor to give a performance like this, with barely any dialogue?
Well, I don’t like to reveal my secrets! But I map out fairly clearly the emotional arc, what I think the character is thinking and feeling in every scene. I’m a real believer that you can communicate everything through the lens, through the image, if you have been able to figure out what’s going on in the mind of the character. And I consider Cillian to be one of the best actors on the planet. You don’t have to tell him a lot, give him much direction. Because the story was so personal to me, I made it personal and I invited him to do the same, to find a personal connection to the character and the story. I never told him how to play it, I just shared my own vulnerabilities with him. I think some of that might come through in the performance.
Cillian is a producer on this film, as are Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. How closely were they involved in the shaping of the story from the production side?
They were very supportive. It was always: “Can I do something for you? Can I help you?” They really liked the script, and Ben had some really good notes in the edit, which I think made the movie much better. They were very collaborative and supportive. I never had a feeling they were looking over my shoulders. I remember getting a few notes back during the edit about the scene with the inciting incident where Bill first sees what is happening with the women at the asylum. Ben just gave a note on how to show that. It just showed how smart he is. It was this one little idea, and suddenly the film just worked so much better.
Cillian’s character is a very different look at masculinity, particularly Irish masculinity, than I’m used to seeing onscreen. He’s a world away from Daniel Day Lewis screaming in In the Name of the Father.
That’s a good point. For me, I’m only interested in these kind of male characters, because those are the kind of characters I look up to. I’m always interested in that kind of vulnerability. Even when Cillian and I did Peaky Blinders, we tried to find that vulnerability in [his depiction of] Thomas Shelby. So, from a personal perspective, this just feels right and normal to me. But a female producer told me recently that, from a feminist perspective, it’s really important that we start to think about the kind of men, the kind of masculinity, we want to live with, and to portray that kind of masculinity onscreen. That wasn’t my quest with the movie, but I’m happy to hear it was received this way.
