Small Things Like These - Review

Rating: 4 out of 5

FRESH from his Oscar-winning performance in Oppenheimer, Cillian Murphy delivers another quietly brooding turn in powerful drama Small Things Like These.

Based on Claire Keenan’s critically-acclaimed novella, the film is set in the early ‘80s and centres around Ireland’s notorious Magdalene Laundries (homes owned by the Catholic Church to house unwed mothers, in shameful conditions, and whose babies were subsequently sold to foster parents).

Murphy has described the subsequent scandal (which incredibly ran until 1998) a “collective trauma”. And the film, which he also produced, certainly feels trauma informed.

But far from being sensationalist, director Tim Mielants takes a more intimate, low-key approach that may be too slow burning for some - but which lends the film a haunting quality.

Murphy plays Bill, a coalman in County Wexford, who is married and the father to several daughters. He is inherently decent and caring, yet troubled by what is going on around him - partly because of his own troubled past.

Mielants’ film therefore splits between the present and the past as Bill reflects on the kindly woman, Mrs Wilson (Michelle Fairley), who took him and his unwed mother in (sparing them from the laundries), before tragedy befell his mum.

In the present, Bill is further triggered by the discovery of a young mum in the coal shed of the laundry he delivers too, which in turn places him on the radar of the stern church sister (Emily Watson), who is all too aware of both the power she holds and the potential for Bill to ruin it.

Like I mentioned, Small Things Like These opts for a slow burn approach to what ultimately transpires, which allows for a more psychological piece than anything prone to verbal fireworks or physical acts.

It allows the story to linger, while further enhancing Murphy’s reputation for doing a lot without much dialogue. His Bill may appear unassuming and even weak by virtue of his near-crippling self-doubt (and the insistent warnings of his community not to meddle with the church for fear of its reach). But his quiet anguish gives rise to an unshakeable morality that eventually compels him to do the right thing.

It also lends the film its faint sense of optimism - a final shot that arrives with a sense of hope for standing up and doing the right thing (the power of the individual to affect change), albeit one that's imbued with a simultaneous sense of unease that Bill’s life may be about to implode.

As his rival, Watson is superbly sinister - saying more with a look than a word, yet delivering her sermons with an authority that’s unsettling (her congregation knows who’s in charge).

But it’s a measure of the confidence that Mielant has in his stars and the script as a whole that no one is called upon to showboat, which makes the film and its message linger.

As Murphy states, the Magdalene scandal remains a collective trauma - and this is a film that treats that trauma with respect. It’s a sobering, wholly impressive movie that packs a quietly powerful emotional punch.

Certificate: 12A
Running time: 98mins