Small Things Like These

Small Things Like These

As an Irish writer, Small Things Like These is most admirable for bringing to a worldwide audience the severity of Irish complacency. It depicts, in the vaguest of terms, the Magdalene Laundry tragedies which afflicted Ireland through the 20th century, and asks how we could turn a blind eye to the 10,000+ women who suffered there for so long. Precious little is spoken allowed, with the film’s horrors instead being communicated almost entirely through elemental performances, frames and sounds. 

Key to this is star Cillian Murphy who, off his Oppenheimer buzz, plays Bill “The Coal Man” Furlong, a family man with dim eyes and a numbing disinterest in the world around him. He doesn’t answer phones, never asks questions, and when his wife insists on getting him a Christmas present, he chooses “a book”. We see the world largely through his eyes, occasionally witnessing things we shouldn’t only through curtains, gaps and doorways; glimpses, easily ignored.

The film, based on Claire Keegan’s bestseller of the same name, eventually contrives a scenario which forces Furlong to meet the Magdalene crisis head-on, culminating in a sequence comparable to The Shining as Murphy walks us through the depths of Hell within the walls of a local convent. It’s a film in considerable control of its style, gradually giving life to a cold and minimalist village until its final sequences simply overwhelm. All in all, Small Things Like These a difficult but necessary watch, albeit one that may require some further reading to appreciate in full, particularly for the international crowd.

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