Oscar-winner Cillian Murphy's work has been a subtle blow against complacency as he navigates darkness with his roles, speaking out for the voiceless, looking for the cracks behind the high-gloss facade. His latest film, Steve, highlights social realism, withering and insistent. In a recent interview, Murphy uses empathy as a searchlight, shining on the disparity of society that pretends to preserve an order while lives bleed on the periphery.

Leaning into this new work, Murphy shared his opinions and conscience, calling out for all ears and all examination.

While discussing the premise of Steve, which is set in 1996 Britain, Cillian Murphy invoked Ireland as a mirror where teachers are driven out because they cannot afford to live in the cities in which they work, like Dublin, Cork, which is a collapse of public service. In a recent Big Issue interview, Murphy reflected on the "massive, systemic, societal fu----- imbalance where the most important people can’t afford to buy a house." In his opinion, the inequality of housing then becomes a pivot, when those who teach, heal, and care cannot settle a life, the system starts to collapse.

According to Murphy, this is not only an Irish but a global problem where public facilities such as schools, reform centers, and mental health care are starved by neglect and austerity. As a result of this "trickle-down effect," the places like schools for excluded kids shut down, and the children get abandoned, he stressed. Under-funded reform schools, covert addictions, all revealed in the daily struggle. For him, the system leaves behind the very ones it purports to help, as he shared with the outlet. Murphy viewed Steve today as an echo of 1996 Britain, on the brink of "things can only get better," but for so many, nothing gets better.

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In Steve, these fractures in social structure drive the narrative itself.

Steve unravels over the course of a single chaotic day in 1996 at a reform school for socially excluded youths, a facility haphazardly pieced together by Cillian Murphy's protagonist. Additional stresses become apparent when a documentary team arrives, political leaders intrude, and closure is imminent. Meanwhile, Steve, the sensitive, intense, pain-killer addict, damaged headteacher, has to keep his hold as internal and external crises converge as he is pushed to the limit.

Despite his demons, he asserts that compassion is not weakness but resistance against system erasure, and is the only way to solve youth's mental health crises, as "punitive or othering or stigmatizing" backfires, per Murphy. With students labeled failures by society, Steve's compassion is both his shield and his weakness. The movie does not dramatize injustice alone; it poses critical questions. With a candid eye, Steve reveals how institutional underfunding, social isolation, and the mental health stigma deplete trust, hope, and identity. 

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