Small Things Like These (12A)

In 1985, Bill Furlong works as a coal merchant in the Irish town of New Ross, providing for his wife Eileen and five daughters. Dark secrets connected to the local convent run by Mother superior Sister Mary force Bill to confront shattering truths close to home and the injustices of the Magdalene laundry system.

LondonNet Film Review

Small Things Like These (12A) Film Review from LondonNet

Adapted by playwright Enda Walsh from Claire Keegan’s award-winning novel, Small Things Like These preaches about the silent complicity of a close-knit 1980s Irish community, which carries the invisible scar of generational trauma inflicted by a Magdalene laundry. The church-controlled institution confines women and girls and compels them to work as penitence for the sinful transgression of falling pregnant outside of wedlock. Terrified daughters vanish, disowned by parents to the mercy of steely-eyed nuns, who ignore tearful pleas for compassion and sell the newborns to foster families. Screams for help carried on the wind are heard but ignored by God-fearing townsfolk, who rely on the church to educate their children…

Belgian director Tim Mielants’s melancholic drama challenges one soft-hearted family man (Cillian Murphy) to turn a blind eye after he witnesses the debasement of young charges in the care of Mother Superior, played with an intense, soul-scorching stillness by Emily Watson. In one barnstorming scene, the father cowers in the sister’s presence as she adds five £10 notes to a handwritten Christmas card for his wife and calmly licks the envelope shut: “That’s us done, I’d say.”

Murphy’s tightly clenched performance, underscored by immersive sound design that captures every tremulous intake of air to soothe frayed nerves, is in stark contrast to his charismatic, Oscar-winning portrayal of J Robert Oppenheimer.

When he was 12 (played by Louis Kirwan), coal merchant Bill Furlong (Murphy) witnessed his mother (Agnes O’Casey) die suddenly while working for Mrs Wilson (Michelle Fairley). Raised by the wealthy war widow, one of the few women who could do what she pleased, Bill grew up with a deep-rooted need to help others. Now a father to five daughters, Bill is fiercely protective of his brood so when he witnesses horrors at the local convent, he faces an agonising moral quandary. “If you want to get on in this life, there are things you have to ignore,” calmly counsels his wife Eileen (Eileen Walsh). Local publican Mrs Kehoe (Helen Behan) echoes the cautionary sentiment, warning Bill that the sisters have fingers in every pie and if he casts aspersions, he could sound a death knell for his coal yard. “Keep the bad dog with you and the good dog won’t bite,” she strongly urges.

Small Things Like These is a measured and absorbing contemplation of the cruelty that takes root like a weed when an entire community averts its gaze under the guise of self-preservation. At every turn, Walsh’s script practises restraint, addressing the same historical injustices as The Magdalene Sisters and Philomena without explicitly depicting abusive behaviour on screen. Murphy is mesmerising, single tears occasionally rolling down his cheek bones as tight-lipped turmoil crests behind a fracturing emotional dam. Mielants concludes his deliberately slow-paced film before the walls are breached.

– Kim Hu