{"id":1176858,"date":"2024-11-07T19:07:00","date_gmt":"2024-11-08T03:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/?p=1176858"},"modified":"2024-11-07T19:06:16","modified_gmt":"2024-11-08T03:06:16","slug":"small-things-like-these-tim-mielants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.moviemaker.com\/small-things-like-these-tim-mielants\/","title":{"rendered":"Loud Inside: Tim Mielants on Directing Small Things Like These"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tim Mielants sees a close connection between his native Belgium and Ireland, the setting of his new film, Small Things Like These<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The film, based on Claire Keegan\u2019s novel of the same name, stars Cillian Murphy as Bill Furlong, a coal merchant in a small Irish town who stumbles onto the Catholic Church\u2019s grim method of hiding and exploiting girls who give birth out of wedlock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Magdalene Laundries<\/a>, which operated for decades, were a closely held secret for decades in Ireland, and the last one wasn\u2019t closed until the mid-90s. Mielants saw a parallel between the secrecy around the laundries and the complicity of Belgians when Nazis occupied Belgium in World War II.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The occupation was the subject of Mielants\u2019 previous film, Wil<\/em>, released in 2023. He has always tried to understand, he says, why so many people fail to speak out against injustice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI talked to my grandparents, who were silent too, and I kind of get it. I\u2019ve got two kids. I kind of understand it, and try to understand it,\u201d he says. \u201cBut I feel like this silence is very loud and always triggers me: Why are people so silent all the time?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mielants also felt a strong connection with Small Things Like These<\/em> because he, like Bill Furlong, has a deep understanding of grief. Bill lost his mother as a small child in the film, just as Mielants lost his brother in real life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grieving, Mielants believes, sometimes builds people up \u2014 to be strong enough to do things that others fear to do. Small Things Like These<\/em> raises the question of whether Bill will do the right thing, or let silence win.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mielants\u2019 previous work includes the 2019 feature tragicomic Patrick<\/em>, about a nudist-camp maintenance man looking for a missing hammer, as well as the TV shows Legion<\/em>, The Tunnel<\/em>, and Murphy\u2019s Peaky Blinders<\/em>. We spoke with him in front of a very receptive Newport Beach Film Festival audience about making Murphy\u2019s follow-up to the Oscar-magnet Oppenheimer<\/em>, working with producers Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, and the tyranny of silence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim Mielants on Adapting Small Things Like These<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Director Tim Mielants on the set of <\/em>Small Things Like These. Photo Credit: Shane O\u2019Connor<\/em>. Photos courtesy of Lionsgate.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Tim Molloy: <\/strong>I respect and admire the pace of Small Things Like These<\/em>. There’s so much pressure to speed up everything, and you really let us take in this world: Bill\u2019s town, his home, his job. Can you talk about any pressure you may have felt to do things faster, even if it was just internal pressure, and how you resisted that to follow your real artistic impulse?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim Mielants:<\/strong> My personal connection to the story is grief, and I dealt with a similar trauma in my life, so I was kind of mapping that out, that pain, and trying to understand that pain. And for me, it was going with Cillian through every little thought process along the way on the timeline, and mapping, structuring grief a little bit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think the film might feel silent, but I think it’s very loud inside. I think back in the day men weren’t allowed \u2014 in Ireland, in 1985, when you were 45 years old \u2014 to talk about emotions. That was just not happening. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And you had this very vulnerable man losing his mother. He built like a concrete wall in front of him, and it’s kind of an emotional bursting volcano all the time. So for me, it was fast. It was, emotionally, very loud. So I never pictured it as a slow movie In that respect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim Molloy:<\/strong> I’d say patient more than slow \u2014 letting us sit in moments and really appreciate what’s happening. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim Mielants:<\/strong> I feel like an audience can fill up the gaps. It’s kind of a minimalistic thing, like a minimalist painting: Feel free to associate whatever you want to associate with and find in it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Cillian Murphy as Bill Furlong and Zara Devlin as Sarah Redmond in <\/em>Small Things Like These. Photo Credit: Enda Bowe<\/em>. Photos courtesy of Lionsgate.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Tim Molloy:<\/strong> I understand that you told your crew, \u201cI don’t know anything about Ireland. Guide me through.\u201d I’m sure you knew quite a bit about Ireland to capture it as well as you did. But can you talk about what you learned about Ireland in the process of making this?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim Mielants:<\/strong> They’re wonderful, beautiful people, and there’s a lot of similarities between Belgium and Ireland, because we\u2019ve both got the Roman Catholic Church in every layer of society. And I think it’s a very universal theme, which is about when you are silent, you are complicit, and the church asks us to be silent all the time. But when you\u2019re silent, you’re complicit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I learned over the years, and also doing World War II movies, is that when there’s an institution that asks for absolute power and you’re not allowed to question anything, abuse will happen eventually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim Molloy:<\/strong> Can you talk about structuring this around the five stages of grief?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim Mielants: <\/strong>It’s a theme that always comes back, and what I love about the story: When you’re out of the stages of grief, how it could make you stronger. There’s really light at the end of the tunnel. It can make you stronger, and you might be able to do something that you wouldn’t be able to do if you didn’t go through that pain. \u2026 I was finding things that I personally went through. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim Molloy:<\/strong> You used a lot of impressive \u201880s touchstones that aren\u2019t the obvious or overused touchstones \u2014 a Danger Mouse<\/em> cartoon, for instance. Can you talk about recreating that era?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim Mielants: <\/strong>What we didn’t want to do is have, like, \u201cOh, this is 1985.\u201d We just wanted to slowly discover it a little bit. And we tried to do it with music. And if they\u2019re boxing fans, at the beginning, when they\u2019re talking about a boxer, people could know it. We give little hints, but it’s timeless. This has been happening for centuries, all the time. So it’s not necessarily \u201885. This is like with respect to many, many victims who have been through this. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tim Mielants on Working With Cillian Murphy, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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