Cillian Murphy could have done literally anything after the unbelievable critical, commercial, and awards success of Oppenheimer, so it rather makes sense that this most limelight-avoidant of stars would take that post-Nolan clout and use it to go home to Ireland and tell a very quiet yet stirring story of the country’s tragic recent history. Small Things Like These, as adapted from Clare Keegan’s novel by director Tim Mielants and writer Enda Walsh, takes him to a sleepy everyone-knows-everyone Irish town in the ‘80s to tackle the immense injustices of the Magdalene Laundries and the restrained heroics of those who might stand up against them.
Murphy plays Bill Furlong, a coal merchant with a solid marriage and five daughters, as he goes through a sort of spiritual crisis in the lead up to Christmas. A deeply sensitive man, and informed always by the kindness he was shown as a child after his mother died, he sees how his country fails its youth, inflicting needless cruelties upon them, and it weighs on him in a way that no one can relate to, least of all his ‘I’m alright, Jack’ wife Eileen (Eileen Walsh). It’s a weight that becomes unbearable when he encounters a pregnant young woman during a coal delivery to a Magdalene Laundry who begs him to take her with him, away from the nun-guarded prison to which she was sent by her ashamed parents.
Torn between doing the right thing and protecting his family – the Laundry is run by the powerfully sinister figure of Sister Mary (Emily Watson), who controls, amongst many other things, the schools attended by Bill’s daughters – Murphy plays Bill’s uncertainty just brilliantly. Small Things Like These is an exceptionally quiet film, the grandest set-piece being a tensely subtext-laden talk over tea between Bill and Sister Mary, and Murphy is the perfect vessel for its interiority.
No one can look hauntedly into the middle distance like he can, making even the stillest scenes magnetic with those trademark piercing eyes all while keeping him believably a member of a local, working-class community, no mean feat given that Murphy is one of the actor-est looking actors around. It’s a fantastic keystone around which Mielants and Walsh can build a rich and textured world, filled with life and hidden stories, from Bill’s loyal employees at the coal company to the dinner table chats and homework summaries of his daughters.
It’s a film to get gradually lost in, maybe even a little *too* subtle and muted at times, its tragedies and triumphs happening at the peripheries. Then again, this is surely the point of this story, a reckoning with how willing people are to ignore even the most local suffering when standing up to it would be an inconvenience, and how fighting back against it can only ever be a matter of collecting small, personal victories.
Jack Blackwell – Film Reviews 