Click here to listen to the interview.
Tim Mielants via Zoom, 11/7/24
Tim Mielants homes in on something fundamental about human nature in our conversation on November 7, 2024, and he did it with my very first question about his haunting film, SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE based on the novella by Claire Keegan. Set around a Christmas in the 1980s, it revolves around the good-hearted Bill Furlong, played by Cillian Murphy, a coal merchant who is confronted by abuses being perpetrated by the local nuns in his small Irish village. The situation is specific, but it speaks to something universal when it comes to doing good and doing evil.
Mielants’ film is about the silences as much as the dialogue, and we talked about the implications of it both in the film and in life. It’s a topic he touched on as well in his previous film, WIL, about an auxiliary policeman during the German occupation of his native Belgium.
We went on to talk about what I called the battle of the big blue eyes during a pivotal scene between Murphy and Emily Watson as a nun with secrets and too much power, as well as how sound can shape those ci-mentioned sciences, and the non-intuitive choice of Christmas carol featured in a barber shop.
The film co-stars Eileen Walsh, Zara Devlin, and Zara Dunne.
Mielants directed from a script he co-wrote with Enda Walsh, and his previous work includes PATRICK, WIL, and Peaky Blinders.
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