SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE
Directing: B+
Acting: A-
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+
You could say Small Things Like These is a spiritual sequel to the 2013 film Philomena. Both films are a pointed examination of the barbaric practice of forcing young, unwed mothers to carry their babies to term in private before taking their children away from them. Small Things Like These ends with a note that this was done, at least in Ireland where the film is set, at recently as 1998. I nearly fell out of my chair, but cruelly puritanical treatment of woman should come as no surprise no matter the era.
I key difference, though, with Philomena is that it tells the story of one of these women. Small Things Like These makes a man the protagonist, something I went in wondering how they were going to pull it off. It turns out there is a very good reason for this, as Small Things Like These is very much about doing the right thing in the face of injustice, even if you’re not the one experiencing it.
Perhaps the most memorable line occurs in a conversation between Bill Furlong (Cillian Murphy, predictably excellent) and his wife, Eileen (Eileen Walsh). After a chance encounter with one of these teen moms at a local convent, who desperately pleads for him to take her away, Eileen tells him: “To get on in this life, there are some things you have to ignore.”
Director Tim Mielants, working with Enda Walsh and based on the 2021 novel by Claire Keegan, takes a lot of time to get to this point. We spent a lot of quiet moments with Bill, who runs a business delivering coal—including to the convent—and comes home every night to a large house of women: his wife, and three daughters. A great deal of time is spent on what it took me a short while to realize were flashbacks to his childhood. In the meantime, I kept wondering why I was being shown these scenes, and indeed even what story was being told.
To the credit of this film—and its editor, Alain Dessauvage (who also edited the superb French film Close)—there comes a point at which the story being told finally starts to click into place, in a skillfully organic way. On dual tracks, we realize that Bill’s own mother was unwed, but granted kindness by a woman who offered her employment as a live-in maid and allowed Bill to live with them as well. She even keeps Bill with her when his young mother suddenly dies. And this is what grants Bill both a unique perspective and an unusual empathy for these girls underling forced labor at the convent’s laundry.
Emily Watson plays Sister Mary, the nun running this convent. Never before have I seen Watson play a character so effectively chilling, in just one sequence. Bill delivers his coal earlier than usual, and finds one of the teenage girls, Sarah (Zara Devlin), sleeping without a blanket, locked in the coal room in the dead of winter (Christmastime, to be precise—surely another pointed narrative choice). Sister Mary plays it off as foolish games of children, but it’s quickly apparent that this kids are being abused.
Before long, a couple of different people take Bill aside to warn him against “making yourself a nuisance.” One woman says, ominously, “Those nuns have their fingers in every pie.” Clearly news has traveled fast in the town that Bill has seen something at the convent that he shouldn’t.
I won’t give away the ending, except to say that in the final scene, I was dying to know how his wife an daughters will respond to the very consequential choice Bill has made. We never find this out, the credits rolling before the story can get there. This is an example of a film leaving key questions unanswered in a deliberate and profound way.
The idea of doing what’s right in the face of institutional injustice hangs over the entire, deceptively simple story of Small Things Like These—delivered with a finesse that Blitz reaches for, in a much louder and more chaotic way, but does not quite reach. This is a film constructed in such a way that a rewatch would likely give fresh illumination. I’m not especially eager to revisit it, given the somberness of the story. But even the first impression is one that’s going to stick with me for a while.
Overall: B+