By test December 18, 2024
14/11
And the children who were taken from them
In 1985, devout Father Bill Furlong discovers disturbing secrets held by a local monastery and uncovers his own shocking truths. Cillian Murphy is a fan of the original film’s writer Claire Keegan. He remembers reading her novel "Foster" on the train and having to pull up his hoodie because he was crying. Eileen Furlong: If You Want to Get on With This Life, There Are Things You Must Ignore. Dedicated to the more than 56,000 young women who were sent to Magdalene Institutions for "repentance and rehabilitation" between 1922 and 1998.
It took me a few days to process this film
Featured on 60 Minutes: Crisis in the Red Sea/Fake Voters/Searching for Cillian Murphy (2024). To everyone who asked me "did you like it?" I couldn’t give an answer. I didn’t like it and I didn’t like it for a simple reason, it’s so immersive, such a meditative experience that I just internalized it. There were times during scenes where I realized I wasn’t breathing for a few seconds, other times I found myself smiling, at some points I felt a heaviness in my chest. It’s Ireland in the Dark Ages, when you start watching this film you might feel like you’re in the 50s but you’re actually in the mid-80s, people were lucky if they had a job and a warm place to sleep, the Catholic Church was running the show and was so infiltrated into the institutions that they controlled the education system and therefore shaped the culture of the time.
Small town, narrow-minded, everyone knows everything and everyone
So we have this story, which is unfortunately true, that takes place in New Ross, Ireland. It’s a small town, the film does a fantastic job of getting you into the oppressive atmosphere, even by showing the main character Bill Furlong doing very repetitive work tasks at the beginning, it’s all part of getting you into the mood. Perception is crucial, show your best side, keep the bad hidden, approve, don’t think outside the box. And repeat. We meet Bill Furlong in the middle of a nervous breakdown, he was the child of a young mother without a father, who was lucky enough to be raised by the woman his mother worked for.
He has a difficult childhood because despite being raised by a woman with money, he doesn’t belong in this world and time is not kind to a child without a father
He is trying to come to terms with his past when one day while delivering coal to the monastery in the village he finds a girl in a cold shed who has stayed there overnight. His struggle between personal interests and doing the right thing is intense, he has 5 girls and the nuns control the education and therefore the future prospects of his talented girls, whom he loves and has worked his whole life to care about moral things and do the right thing. and ethics add to this the fact that his mother could have been one of those girls if she had not been so lucky to be taken in by a kind man. He is forced to look the other way, to ignore other people suffering for the sake of his own family, but when he looks the other way, there is someone who understands the pain, someone who has been there and knows what it means, looking the other way becomes that much harder. It’s beautifully shot to accentuate the dark and somber, to match the heavy tone of the story, the use of out-of-focus lenses I found incredible and crucial to the plot, when you see something you don’t want to see, something you want to block out.
The scene with Eileen in the living room is such an incredible example: she’s listening but ignoring, she doesn’t really want to know
Eileen Walsh is absolutely phenomenal in her portrayal of this woman who for a moment you think is a coward, but then you realize she’s scared, she’s doing it for the good of her family, rather than blaming her.
https://ruftapparel.com/2024/12/08/september-5-2024-magnet-download/