Directed By Tim Mielants

Starring – Cillian Murphy, Eileen Walsh, Emily Watson

The Plot – Takes place over Christmas in 1985, when devoted father and coal merchant Bill Furlong (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.”

Rated PG-13 for thematic material

Small Things Like These (2024) Official Trailer – Cillian Murphy, Emily Watson (youtube.com)

POSITIVES

The quietly subdued and meditative brand of storytelling that this movie adopts comes with varying degrees of results, based on mileage, but where it ultimately succeeds is offering an introspective scope into the regrets and longing of one man trysts with religious morality, leading him down a tender path of reflection and redemption that culminate throughout these very personal flashbacks tying to his memories. This is the sensitive direction that screenwriter Enda Walsh takes towards uncovering a cryptic character study defined by those very small things that the title alludes to, with smooth transitions between the dual timelines that vividly evoke the feelings and familiarity of this suppressed matter, almost in ways that absorb and continuously run together with schemes of the editing that feel practically non-existent in deciphering them. Because of such, the film carries a show over tell approach that I not only greatly appreciated for the value that it appraises to the movie’s imagery and the spellbinding work of the ensemble, but also in that it confidently trusts the audience to coherently interpret everything that they’re being shown, challenging them in ways that requires them to pay attention to those aforementioned little things, and how they can materialize into something inescapably persisting in the mind and consciousness of those who overlook them. Mielants’ direction also goes a long way towards utilizing what he can about the distinctions in this distinguished setting to play towards an atmospheric uneasiness that constantly hangs overhead like a thick fog. Ireland itself is an ideal place for a psycho-drama, for its dreary and timeless aspects feeding effortlessly to an established tone and age in the confines of the story, but when it corresponds with a real life scandal that took place there over the course of 170 years, then its small town setting garners an internal theology where it feels like everybody is sharing the same common secret, especially for the stuffy and concealing feelings of scenes set in the church, which Tim maintains without the use of a corresponding score, so as not to distract or detract from what audiences should be feeling. In terms of characterization, the film faithfully follows Bill throughout its 93-minute run time, and though we learn more about what has happened to him, instead of who he is, there’s a defined resiliency and honor as a dedicated family man to his rendering that makes him an ideal protagonist when conflicted with the burden of threatening his peaceful existence for the freedom of a stranger. Being that Bill is someone who is adored by local townsfolk as a hard-working father of five daughters, the continuous dives inside of his mind give way to an appeasing vulnerability that we otherwise don’t experience in a man who is all business, and with the flashbacks uncovering someone burdened by the actions he didn’t take paralleling those he’s plagued with in the present day, the struggle definitely doesn’t lack stakes to what’s so thoroughly defined, blurring the line of right and wrong, and instead allowing the movie to persist within this shade of grey that did legitimately keep me from being able to predict which side of decision that he would ultimately choose, maybe as a personal means of me being so ignorant with the specificities of this scandal. Murphy, fresh off of an Oscar win for the commanding portrayal he exuded during ‘Oppenheimer’, follows up matters with an equally intense and cerebral performance that I couldn’t take my eyes off of, with Murphy’s expressive eyes to the soul eliciting more sentiments than a thousand words of dialogue ever could. While Murphy has made a prestigious career out of these subdued and undermeasured characters, he continues to inscribe a versatility to their personalities that make them feel so different, and that’s certainly no exception here, as the measured components of longing and confliction that Cillian deposits subscribe a sincerity to sensitivity that audience empathy never withers from, with Murphy here feeling as continuously mesmerizing as anything previously conjured, despite a limited dialogue that forces him to communicate with the eyes conveying his character’s moral struggle. Emily Watson is also a meaningful addition to the foray, despite a tragically minimalized amount of screen time, in which she grips with the kind of unflinching imposition on the movie’s interactions, in order to make you feel her influence on the proceedings, long after she’s left the frame. Ironically enough, Watson probably has more dialogue in her two scenes than Murphy does in the entirety of the film, but it speaks volumes to the power struggle between faith and the community that her character so obviously drives, and while Watson has been a screen veteran for many decades, I’ve never seen her be as dark and beleaguering as she is in this movie.

NEGATIVES

On the other side of the film’s meditative framing, the scale of the movie and storytelling feel far too condensed to ever effectively register the magnitude of this shocking scandal, especially when it pulls back during the film’s ending, with an on-screen text that conveys the number of those affected over many decades. Centering this film around one man doesn’t make it necessarily irresponsible, but it does shortchange the importance and magnitude of this scandal in ways that deserved a wider and more detailed approach to what it ultimately brought down upon the Irish communities, especially considering the film only stretches so far in the years covered in it. 93 minutes certainly isn’t enough time to articulate the kind of required foundation to a story this important, but in refusing to deviate away from Bill’s side on the conflict, it feels more interested and focused on his trysts with morality, instead of serving a documented purpose, leaving us with a far less interesting angle on the proceedings than those left abandoned by surface level exploits. Also compromising for the meticulous storytelling is the movie’s grindingly arduous pacing, which made this movie and specific prolonged scenes a chore to get through. Considering this is a movie that really doesn’t get to the point it’s trying to serve until around the 40-minute mark, those initial engagements with Bill start to stack as nothing more than the daily routines in the life of a provider to the household, and while I understand that they’re all integral towards fleshing out his character, there’s no urgency or drama to the movie’s first half, so it requires more patience than it rightfully should towards an anything but demanding run time, leaving these pocketed moments of, honestly, boredom that I wish were worked out in another draft to the script. Finally, while only periodically problematic to me, the clarity of the sound mixing obscuring these thick Irish accents will undoubtedly disconnect audiences from latching on to these vital conversations, leaving the rarely deposited keys of exposition free from their wandering ears. For my money, the mixing in post-production feels slightly underwhelming, and even if it takes away from the authenticity of an environment in a distracting way, I would rather be able to hear everything that’s being discussed, instead of not.

OVERALL
‘Small Things Like These’ is a meditatively subdued character study about turning a blind eye to societal injustices, elevated immensely by another award-worthy performance from Cillian Murphy, whose open windows to the soul of this story uncovers a man burdened by a lifetime of regret. In the same sense, the movie’s small introspective scope and scale tragically undermine the magnitude of the single greatest scandal to happen to Irish Catholicism, in turn removing much of the importance of the real-life story that definitely deserved more time and attention to vividly flesh out

My Grade: 7/10 or B-