Small Things Like These takes place over Christmas in 1985, when devoted father and coal merchant Bill Furlong (Cillian Murphy) discovers startling secrets kept by the convent in his town, along with some shocking truths of his own. The film reveals truths about Ireland’s Magdalene laundries — horrific asylums run by Roman Catholic institutions from the 1820s until 1996, ostensibly to reform “fallen young women.”
Small Things like These is a 2024 historical drama film directed by Tim Mielants and adapted by Enda Walsh from the 2021 novel by Claire Keegan. The film stars Cillian Murphy (who also serves as a producer), Eileen Walsh, Michelle Fairley, Emily Watson, Clare Dunne, and Helen Behan. An international co-production between Ireland and Belgium, its plot focuses on Ireland’s infamous Magdalene laundries.
The film had its world premiere on 15 February 2024 at the 74th Berlin International Film Festival. In June 2024, Lionsgate Films acquired distribution rights to the film for North America, the United Kingdom and Ireland, teaming up with Roadside Attractions for the American release. It was released in Ireland and the United Kingdom on November 1, 2024, and in the United States on November 8, 2024.
Film Review for Smaall Things Like These
Cillian Murphy starred in one of the biggest films of 2023, and he starts 2024 at the opposite end of the spectrum, with super-intimate Irish drama Small Things Like These. Yet his role here isn’t altogether removed from Oppenheimer, as he again plays an introspective man dealing with his conscience in the face of a life-changing moment of insight.
Murphy’s presence will lend modest commercial traction to a sombre film that will undoubtedly be a tough sell, even given the production muscle of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s Artists Equity – and which, kicking off the Berlinale, may qualify as one of the most downbeat openers ever for a major festival. But Murphy’s performance, Tim Mielants’s controlled direction and subtle emotional heft combine to make this low-key adaption of Claire Keegan’s Booker-nominated 2021 novella very much a proposition to be reckoned with. The Oscar-nominated Irish-language adaptation of her earlier work ‘Foster’, The Quiet Girl, broke records in Ireland and will also ensure keen audience interest.
The setting is the town of New Ross in County Wexford, Ireland, and the time – though stated less explicitly than in the book – is the mid-80s. In the run-up to Christmas, coal and fuel merchant Bill Furlong (Murphy) is working hard to keep his clients supplied for a hard winter. By nature introspective, Catholic family man Bill has a tender if sometimes laconic rapport with his wife Eileen (Eileen Walsh) and is devoted to their five daughters, but he is manifestly something of an outsider even in his own home.
Undemonstrative and given to solitary nocturnal brooding, Bill is nonetheless empathetic and a man of conscience, only too aware that his community is going through exceptionally hard times. Carrying the world’s troubles on the battered shoulders of his donkey jacket, he is also haunted by his own past, seen in intermittent flashbacks.
He was born out of wedlock, but he and his mother were given a home by Mrs Wilson (Michelle Fairley), owner of a local farmhouse. Despite her tenderness, Bill (played as a boy by Louis Kirwan) suffers from exclusion and bullying by his peers; from seemingly small but nevertheless significant disappointments when it comes to Christmas presents; and from the pain of not knowing who his father is (this enigma, however, is addressed much earlier than in the book, somewhat shifting the emphasis of the drama).
Bill’s awareness of his mother’s story affects his responses when he discovers a young woman hiding in the coal shed of the local convent. Taking her back indoors to safety – or so he thinks – he is invited to a fireside chat by Sister Mary, the Mother Superior, played by Emily Watson in a mesmerising display of seemingly benign but utterly authoritarian menace. Watson gives a quietly chilling performance, and it’s understandable that Bill shrinks into himself like a terrified child in her presence: as spoken by her, the words, “We’ll have some tea” have never sounded so ominous.
The background is the historic treatment in Ireland of young single mothers, specifically the existence of the notorious Church-run Magdalene Laundries – in effect, punitive workhouses that existed until as recently as 1996. The film is devoted to all the young women and their children who suffered, and in many cases died, as a result of those institutions.
Playwright and screenwriter Enda Walsh, whose cinema work notably includes Steve McQueen’s Hunger, offers a largely faithful adaptation of Keegan’s slim but highy crafted text, often teasing out potent visual cues from seemingly incidental references. In a cast bringing richly charged resonance to the spare dialogue, Eileen Walsh is particularly effective in her scenes with Murphy, as a mother and wife who cares deeply for her own but wants to ensure the safe status quo of her enclosed world. And Murphy, further expanding into psychologically sombre middle-aged roles, is compelling throughout, all the more so because of his character’s absolute reserve. Subtly, Murphy limns the emotional make-up of a life that combines success and domestic contentment on one hand with, on the other, everyday disappointment and unhealed childhood scars.
Belgian director Mielants – whose last film was wartime drama WIL, and whose extensive TV work includes directing Murphy in Peaky Blinders – here adapts convincingly to an Irish environment and themes, moving an unimaginable distance away from the eccentricity of his 2019 nudist camp comedy Patrick. Small Things is tightly controlled in mood and feel, only straying into more conventional period register in the childhood flashbacks. Mielants and DoP Frank Van den Eeden give a profoundly wintry feel to a small world deeply ingrained with coal and condensation; a repeated image of Bill washing the day’s dirt off his hands acquires powerful metaphorical effect in this narrative context.
Working with production designer Paki Smith, Mielants also manages to capture a specific moment of the recent past without overstressing the effect, with sparse period notations provided by the odd pop hit and briefly glimpsed TV excerpts. The open ending, faithful to the book, is another touch of the quiet boldness that the film has in common with its protagonist.
Small Things Like These (2024)
Directed by: Tim Mielants
Starring: Cillian Murphy, Louis Kirwan, Eileen Walsh, Michelle Fairley, Emily Watson as Sister Mary, Clare Dunne, Helen Behan, Liadán Dunlea, Agnes O’Casey, Mark McKenna, Zara Devlin
Screenplay by: Enda Walsh
Production Design by: Paki Smith
Cinematography by: Frank van den Eeden
Film Editing by: Alain Dessauvage
Costume Design by: Alison McCosh
Art Direction by: Irene O’Brien
Music by: Senjan Jansen
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for thematic material.
Distributed by: Lionsgate Films
Release Date:February 15, 2024 (Berlinale), November 1, 2024 (Ireland, United Kingdom), November 8, 2024 (United States)
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