Director Tim Mielants (Peaky Blinders, The Responder) and writer Enda Walsh (Disco Pigs, Hunger) discuss bringing Claire Keegan's bestseller Small Things Like These to the big screen as one of the films of 2024.
Harry Guerin: Tim, when I read that you were going to direct Small Things Like These, I felt it was great that it was a director who wasn't Irish, who was looking in at the 'snow globe' from the outside. What perceptions about Ireland were confirmed for you in making the film and what did you learn along the way?
Tim Mielants: Oh, I talked to a lot of Irish people, I get to know them. I also felt lucky that I didn't have to carry the heavy weight of the history, making this story, in that I could concentrate on the characters. That was, for me, front and centre of it. The grief of the main character is something I relate to personally. There were, of course, where I come from, Flanders, [a] lot of similarities, I think - education is religious, healthcare is religious, the moral compass is religious. We're digging up horrible, horrible things from the past during that period as well. But still, I think the weight of the Irish history is so much more, so much more. And I fell in love with the country. I fell in love with the people. It's brilliant.
Enda, as a writer, what do you admire most about Claire Keegan's craft, and did that also prove the biggest challenge in trying to bring her book to the screen?
Enda Walsh: She's an extraordinary writer, probably, I mean, for me, in the English language, definitely one of the best. She doesn't need many words to make a scene or to talk about a character. So sparse, so quiet, it unfolds, and yet sort of subtextually, she's really... she's charging something. I think it comes from both her skill as a writer but also the space she allows us as a reader to be in. We feel a slight anxiety in this case, I think, with him (Cillian Murphy's character Bill Furlong) as he moves through the story. For me, it was like going, 'Well, of course I need to do this. I don't need to add anything. I just need to sort of lean into her scenes'. But as you begin to make something that's 3D, that's moving, that's physical, that's kinetically more upfront than what she's sort of doing with us on the page, there needed to be forward trajectory. An idea that there was propulsion there - but it wasn't a fast propulsion. But there was a propulsion into the drama of it.
Watch: An interview with Small Things Like These stars Cillian Murphy and Eileen Walsh.
I had read the book, I had steeled myself for the experience of the film after reading the book. I was still on the edge of my seat about what was going to happen next on screen - and I was still in bits by the end of the film. How did that all tally with your experience of making it, knowing the text so well?
Enda Walsh: For my point of view, it's an absolutely stunning, beautiful story, and when I read it, I felt as if it was one of those sort of books that I felt, 'This story's been around for ever'. Do you know what I mean? You think, 'This is extraordinary' - the simplicity of it and how it lands dramatically. That's what drew me to it and also why I wanted to it, and the idea of putting it on film was just really to honour that.
Tim Mielants: Many people talk so differently about the book - that struck me. Sort of [like] the place where I come from, people see different stories in there, different personal connections in there. I think that's what I tried to do with the movie as well: embrace the minimalism and make sure there's a lot of breathing room and a lot of room for interpretations. Not, like, force people to think in a certain way.
There was nothing in the film that didn't feel authentic to me, having been a 12-year-old at the time that it was set. It's amazing for me that a director from another country got it exactly right.
Tim Mielants: Thank you so much, appreciate it. A lot of it, I think, is being surrounded by amazing people who've been helping me. And I think shooting in New Ross [where the book is set] kind of helped, not shooting anywhere else.
Small Things Like These is in cinemas and on streaming and Blu-ray now.
