Cillian Murphy has said he believes cinema shouldn’t be “preachy” with its messages, but still be able to “ask questions” of its audience.
The Irish actor returns to his most famous role as Thomas Shelby in Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, in cinemas this Friday (March 6). The movie, a spin-off of the hit show Peaky Blinders, is set during World War 2.
In an interview with The Times promoting the film, it was mentioned to the star that it’s a film that uses Nazis as its villains, at a time where right-wing influencers and political commentators such as Nick Fuentes are aligning themselves with their ideals.
“That’s profoundly upsetting,” Murphy says in reply. “But then this film wears that lightly — it’s not The Zone of Interest, let’s put it that way. And, look, the last thing I want to be involved in is preachy or dogmatic work because films should never tell you how to feel.
“They should just ask questions. This should be an entertaining action film with a big heart, but if you want to look closer it could be provocative too. The best mainstream entertainment operates simultaneously on those levels.”
He said his Oscar-winning biopic Oppenheimer could be viewed in a “similar” way, being enjoyed on different levels. “If you want to talk about where we are in the world and look at how close we are to nuclear fucking Armageddon, you can think about Oppenheimer in that way, but if you just want to look at a great film with big explosions then that’s cool as well.”
Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man also stars Barry Keoghan as Thomas Shelby’s son, a role the actor recently compared to Simba in The Lion King. As for Cillian Murphy, he recently described himself as “just a fanboy” of Fontaines D.C., whose frontman Grian Chatten contributed the song ‘Puppet’ to The Immortal Man’s soundtrack.
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