Producers: Cillian Murphy, Alan Moloney, Matt Damon, Drew Vinton and Catherine Magee Director: Tim Mielants Screenplay: Enda Walsh Cast: Cillian Murphy, Eileen Walsh, Michelle Fairley, Emily Watson, Zara Devlin, Agnes O’Casey, Mark McKenna, Helen Behan, Liadan Dunlea, Claire Dunne and Louis Kirwan Distributor: Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions
Grade: B+
The now-infamous Magdalene laundries in Ireland, run by Catholic religious orders, housed unwed mothers who were compelled to work there in dire conditions until their babies had been born and given away for adoption. Since reporting of their scandalous practices became widespread in the mid-1990s, the laundries been the subject of repeated film treatment—sometimes directly, as in Peter Mullan’s angry “The Magdalene Sisters” (2003), and at others more obliquely, as in Stephen Frears’s “Philomena” (2013).
Tim Mielants’ film, adapted by Enda Walsh from a 2021 novel by Claire Keegan (whose short story “Foster” was the basis for Colm Bairéad’s extraordinary 2022 “The Quiet Girl”) uses one of the convents as the impetus for an ordinary man’s crisis of conscience in the mid-1980s, when the institutions were still under the protection of the Catholic Church, a dominant power in Ireland, and a compliant, even subservient, government.
The man is Bill Furlong, played by Cillian Murphy in a quietly moving minimalist performance, in which the slightest of gestures carries remarkable depth of emotion. Bill’s a shy, reserved fellow who makes a living delivering coal in the town of New Ross, a family man with a supportive wife named Eileen (Eileen Walsh) and five high-spirited daughters, and a devout Catholic. One day as Christmas is approaching, he makes a delivery to the local nunnery, where he sees a distraught young girl, Sarah Redmond (Zara Devlin), being forced into the place by her mother.
That sight, along with an encounter with a beaten-down boy whose father is a notorious alcoholic, sets Bill thinking about his own upbringing, when he was an unhappy misfit because of the circumstances of his own birth. His mother, also named Sarah (Agnes O’Casey), might have been sent to the Magdalene were it not for Mrs. Wilson (Michelle Fairley), a not terribly warm but still compassionate woman who brought Sarah into her household, and allowed her to raise her fatherless son Bill (played in extensive flashbacks by Louis Kirwan) there. When his mother suddenly died Mrs. Wilson and her farmhand Ned (Mark McKenna) became Bill’s only “family,” though the other local boys treated him badly.
Bill encounters the young woman when he goes to the convent to deliver an invoice for his services; she’s scrubbing the floor alongside some other girls, and begs his help to escape. Though obviously moved by her plight, he allows himself to be hustled away by one of the nuns. Returning with another delivery, however, he finds her hiding in the coal room, and returns her to the nunnery. This time he’s taken to see the Mother Superior Sister Mary, whom Emily Watson brings to formidable life with a look of impassive severity surrounded by her tight-fitting wimple.
Sister Mary, whom we also see sternly leading the responses at a parish mass, cannily questions Sarah to encourage the girl to suggest she’s being well treated. But perceiving that Bill isn’t convinced, she offers him tea (a telling note is interjected when she almost berates the elderly nun who drops a utensil while delivering it, but restrains herself), and then engages in apparent small talk that’s actually intended to intimidate. She asks about his younger daughters, saying she’ll try to find places for them in the crowded parish school when the time comes. And to cement things she ostentatiously writes out a Christmas card, into which she slips in a few bills, for Bill to deliver to his wife.
But Bill’s concerns attract attention. Eileen remarks that sometimes in life one has to ignore unpleasant matters to get along. His friend, pub owner Mrs. Kehoe (Helen Behan), reminds him of who holds the reins of power in the town, and the damage they can do. The question, of course, is whether Bill, who benefited from unusual kindnesses himself, can overcome his natural inclination to intervene—to make what might seem a small gesture but one that can make a world of difference in a life—and stand idly by while the brutalities continue, as so many must have done before the revelations of the 1990s brought down the Magdalene laundries and the corrupt system that enabled them to go on for so long.
Like Mullan’s, this is an angry film, but it’s one in which the anger simmers rather than exploding melodramatically, as exhibited most clearly in the strictly controlled performances of Murphy and Watson, whose confrontation scene is imbued with a coiled tension that puts most horror films to shame. These are brilliant pieces of acting, and though in the supporting cast only Walsh, Devlin and Kirwan get extended opportunities to shine, virtually everyone provides a sharply-etched moment, down to those with the briefest cameos.
The period detail provided by production designer Paki Smith and costumer Alison McCosh is spot-on, and the gloomily burnished cinematography of Frank van den Eeden captures it all with a tone of sad resignation. Alain Dessauvage’s editing is leisurely to an extreme, giving Murphy every second he needs to capture Bill’s emotional turmoil, and Senjan Jansen’s score adds to the mood of melancholia.
There are elements in “Small Things Like These” that might strike one as somewhat heavy-handed in their symbolism. The shots of Bill repeatedly washing off the black coal dust that’s accumulated during his rounds each time he gets home at night, for example, take on a Pontius Pilate vibe that becomes rather hectoring. But the final scene earns its quietly triumphant feel as at least one man decides to stand up to a malignant system, even if we know it would endure for another decade. This is a powerful film about a man confronted by an endemic evil he must choose either to tolerate or resist, spotlighting another award-caliber performance by Cillian Murphy.