Underrated Cillian Murphy Thriller All Fans of His Newest Irish Drama Should Watch

Summary:

• Cillian Murphy ’s next movie after his Oscar-winning performance in Oppenheimer is getting a lot of attention now that it’s released — but one show from a year ago depicts quite the same historical events.
• The series that was released in 2023 follows a woman who tries to live her life with a traumatic experience from the time that she spent in Irish Magdalene Laundries.
• Despite the show’s low recognizability, it still deserves to be given credit for the dramatic plot that dives deep into the real-life events of the 20th century.

With a deserved Oscars win for his powerful performance in Christopher Nolan ’s Oppenheimer, Cillian Murphy is surely at everyone’s hearing right now. 2024 marked not only the actor’s overall success at the awards season, but also the release of his next film, Small Things Like These, which brings to the light some sinister secrets that are kept in an Irish church.

Despite its seemingly unique story that sounds compelling to both Cillian Murphy’s fans and those who are just fascinated by dark corners that world history has, the film has quite a direct connection to The Woman in the Wall — a British show released last year.

Both Small Things Like These and The Woman in the Wall have their storylines centered on Magdalene Laundries, Irish religious institutions that allegedly were created to help “fallen women”, but instead just exploited them without any financial compensation.

Magdalene Laundries happened to be a true symbolism of violence in Ireland of the 20th century as the history counts at least ten thousand of women who were being kept there with many of them being deprived of their children.

Unlike Small Things Like These, where the main character played by Murphy only discovers the secrets of Magdalene laundries, The Woman in the Wall takes a full-range perspective and shows a young woman who herself became a victim of the institution’s inhumane living conditions.

The main character Lorna Brady, whose role is played by Ruth Wilson, is suddenly caught by a triggering event in her life that mentally brings her back to the time that she spent in Magdalene Laundries.

While Cillian Murphy’s drama is definitely getting more attention because of the Oscar-winning actor attached to the project, The Woman in the Wall also deserves more recognition — at least for its emotional depth and plausible demonstration of real-life events from the first person’s perspective.