Harry72’s review published on Letterboxd:
So after winning an Oscar, what was Cillian Murphy going to do next. No, his two minutes in "Kensuke's Kingdom" doesn't count. Here is his next leading role in "Small Things Like These" playing another character with significant moral qualms, but this time a bystander not a part of the cause.
Cillian Murphy plays Bill, a coal merchant in 80s Ireland, who has a feeling not all is right in his town. After delivering coal to the convent one day, he sees a girl being forced into the building begging not to be left there. This shakes him and makes him question his own childhood, where he was taken in by someone of the church as his mother was unwed.
Every glimpse Bill sees of the convent it just gets worse and worse. It turns out that it is one of those infamous and horrible Magadelene laundries, which essentially enslaved unwed women as well as sex workers into doing unpaid laundry. All we see are glimpses into the damage and abuse endured there, but it does enough to leave an engaging impression, as it does to Bill.
He finds himself at a crossroads as a bystander. Does he turn the other way as the rest of the townsfolk do as the Catholic Church is so influential. Or does he become an active bystander and do what he can to fight against this injustice.
It's this dilemma, as well as the build in his discoveries of the present horror as well as his difficult childhood, that give this fairly slow paced film powerful momentum that keeps you invested in seeing where this subtle but engaging story goes.
Cillian Murphy adds to his Oppenheimer performance playing much more of an everyman as a worker and as a family man, where doing the right thing could come him what he has. You can see how he is starting to fall apart with the distress this causes him.
A clever and thoughtful slow-burn which brings light to a problem in Ireland hidden for so long.
Harry72 liked this review
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