Berlin: Matt Damon on Partnering With Cillian Murphy on Irish Drama ‘Small Things Like These’ After ‘Oppenheimer’

Mia Galuppo
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Matt Damon first heard about Small Things Like These, the latest effort from his and Ben Affleck’s Artists Equity, while filming Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, working opposite Cillian Murphy.

“I was out in the New Mexican desert with Cillian. I was sitting across from him, watching what he was doing in Oppenheimer,” remembers Damon during a press conference at the Berlin Film Festival, where the film is acting as the fest opener. “I had already called Ben and told him what I was witnessing and how incredible it was. A couple of days later, Cillian told me, ‘I have my next movie I really want to do.’ And I said, ‘We are starting a studio. Can we be a part of it?'”

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Murphy, who also produces, leads the period drama, which is adapted from the novel of the same name by Irish writer Claire Keegan, set out in a small Irish town in 1985 in the weeks before Christmas. He plays Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man who becomes aware of abuse happening at the local convent, abuse that forces him to confront the trauma of his own childhood and make a moral choice. The backdrop is the real history of the Magdalene Laundries, asylums and workhouses run by the Catholic Church in Ireland purportedly for the purpose of employing and educating “fallen women.”

Small Things Like These was produced by Affleck and Damon’s Artists Equity, the banner that was founded on the principle that more creatives, especially those below the line, would have an equity stake in a film. “For us on the studio side it was a very easy decision [to make the film] because of the people who were involved in it,” said Damon. “One of the things that attracted us to it was great artists grappling with this trauma.”

After being asked about the difficulties in making Small Things Like These in the contemporary entertainment industry, which doesn’t often churn out small, intimate dramas, Damon said the film requires “trust in the audience.” He added: “This film doesn’t pander. It’s asking the audience to care about cinema. I believe there is enough of an audience in the world that still does. These are the kind of movies that when I started out — I really started getting work in the ’90s — you would see movies like this all the time. It was a part of our culture and our lives. I am really grateful to bring a movie like this into theaters and we will see what happens.”

Small Things Like These is selling out of Berlin’s European Film Market.

During the press conference, Murphy was asked what the film means for Ireland, specifically, as it grapples with a dark time in the nation’s recent history. (A formal state apology was issued in 2013 about the treatment of the women in the Laundries.) “I don’t know if I am qualified to speak for the nation but I do know that it was a collective trauma, and I think we are still processing that,” said Murphy. “Art can be a really useful balm for that wound.”

Director Tim Mielants, who worked with Murphy on popular series Peaky Blinders, offered: “For me, it’s a story about grief and structuring the pain of grief.”

Small Things Like These also stars Emily Watson, who plays the head of the Laundry, Sister Mary. “When I read the script, I knew that this would be one of the great days of my acting life,” said Watson of her singular scene in the film, which sees her character attempting to bribe Murphy’s Bill into complacent silence. “It cuts to what the very worst of what humanity can be.”

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