Film Review: Small Things Like These

“Don’t you ever question it?” Bill asks his wife. Her answer highlights why the atrocities depicted in Small Things Like These are allowed to continue for so long without intervention: “If you want to get on in this life, there are things you have to ignore”.

Small Things Like These, a film adaptation of Claire Keegan’s novel of the same name, shines a light on the horrors on the Magdalen Laundries – institutions which served as workhouses for unwed pregnant women and women who lacked a familial structure between the eighteenth and twentieth century in Ireland. 

A visually striking film, pieced together by flashbacks and at times minimal dialogue, it tells the story of fuel merchant Bill Furlong (Cillian Murphy) who, in the lead up to Christmas, faces an internal struggle. He is caught between doing the right thing, as well as being clouded by his personal grief and the all-encompassing power of the local convent. 

The film opens with church bells sounding over the morning winds of County Wexford - an early and delicate indication of the ever presence of the church. We watch as Bill spends the opening scenes making deliveries of fuel and coal to local residents. We observe Bill turning into a courtyard in his cream pickup truck and exiting the vehicle to unload the truck for one of his routine stops at the Good Shepherd Convent. 

Submerged in the shadows of a coal house door, Bill uncomfortably observes a young girl named Sarah (Zara Devlin) pleading with her mother not to be taken into the Convent, until she is handed over to a menacingly calm nun. This, and many scenes like it throughout the film, allow Cillian Murphy to convey how Bill feels without words; expressing trauma and sadness through a look in his eyes and micro expressions on his face. 

Bill's wife Elieen (Eileen Walsh) seems to be aware of the goings on in the church but like many others, turns a blind eye as to not upset the applecart – leaving Bill to suffer sleepless nights staring out the window of his house in thought. 

Sarah appears throughout the film often in between flashbacks of Bill as a child, and serves to elucidate Bill’s current mannerisms and compassionate characteristics. These flashbacks highlight the similarities between his own mother and her experience of raising a child out of wedlock, with Sarah who herself was forced to give up her child by the convent. This was a regular occurrence at the Magdalene Laundries: children were separated from their mothers and taken to children's homes, or given up for adoption.

After Bill returns to the Convent, he is met by Sarah who pauses from scrubbing floors - residents of the Laundries were made to scrub and clean to atone for their sins - to plead with him to help her escape. Later, we see the extent of the suffering girls like Sarah faced in workhouses like the Good Shepherd Convent, at the hands of the Mother Superiors. 

Sister Mary (Emma Watson) is the head of the religious community and – as if through hate and not devotion – carries out her duties as the caregiver for unwed girls and mothers. After finding Sarah locked in the coal house, Bill is led into a room with Sister Mary who reminds him that he has a responsibility to his five girls, who are enrolled in the Good Shepherd Convents neighbouring school. By involving himself with Sarah and the convent, he could be jeopardizing their education and happiness and he’s shown the consequences of morality.

Cillian Murphy seems to effortlessly ooze compassion and a vulnerable kindness, which is expertly contrasted by Emma Watson's cold and unfeeling performance that leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.   

The film wrestles with questions of compassion, morality, and doing the right thing, even if it’s at the expense of yourself and your family's happiness. Limited dialogue throughout does not take away from the fact that the film says a lot, and with stellar performances by the lead actors, the film is an important watch. 

Small Things Like These is showing at Broadway.