Forget Captain America - Small Things Like These is a True Superhero Movie
Based on Claire Keegan’s prize-winning novel, Cillian Murphy’s follow-up to Oppenheimer shows what real life bravery looks like.
good.film
a month ago
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There’s probably no “Hollywood movie star” less Hollywood than Cillian Murphy. Famously shy of the spotlight, the 48 year old Irish actor’s aversion to press junkets is so noticeable that it went gleefully viral. When he won the Best Actor Oscar for Oppenheimer, it was the epitome of an award for merit; the quiet, humble performer being recognised for his superb craft, not his PR skills (not naming any names, but… Will Smith, we’re gettin’ jiggy with you).
For his follow-up role, Murphy’s applied those qualities perfectly to Small Things Like These, an intimate Irish drama with a curly moral WWYD? at its core. Brought to the screen by Belgian director Tim Mielants, the film adapts Claire Keegan’s superb Booker Prize shortlisted novel of the same name. Interestingly though, the book begins where the movie ends – making this film something of a “prequel”. Think of it less as a direct adaptation, and more of an expansion of what led to the characters’ morals and choices before the events of the novel.
From the opening church bell tolling through the steely-grey streets and skies, the presence (and pressure) of religion feels like it hangs as a constant over the town of New Ross, County Wexford in 1985. Murphy plays Bill Furlong, an honest, mild-mannered coal merchant, husband to Eileen (Eileen Walsh) and father to five daughters. We get an instant sense of Bill’s calm morality after he gives some loose change to a local boy, and Eileen later asks What’d you do that for? You know his Dad'll only drink it. Bill’s quiet response tells us all we need to know about his character: We don’t know that love. He might be trying.
How does Small Things Like These explore institutional abuse?
It’s on his morning coal delivery rounds that Bill first sees a teenage girl being dragged into the local convent, quite literally kicking and screaming. For the rest of the day, a rumbling, low grind acts like Bill's conscience as the memory hangs in his mind. What Bill witnessed was the fear of being sent away to one of Ireland’s infamous Magdalene laundries – institutions where ‘fallen women’ were taken in by the Catholic Church, or sent there by parents ashamed of their daughters’ pregnancies and implied promiscuity.
It was all under the guise of ‘moral reform’, but in reality, these women were exploited for their labour, and physically and mentally tortured. At many of the laundries, conditions were described as worse than prison. And it gets worse still – after the young women gave birth, their babies were adopted out without their consent. Often, records of where they were sent were incomplete or, believe it or not, deliberately obscured. For Australian audiences, there’s a resonance to the ‘Stolen Generation’ of First Nations children; similarly in the US and Canada, the Native American Boarding Schools of the late 19th century. It’s actually a tragedy that this wholly Irish story is SO relatable worldwide.
“The crazy and scary thing is that they only closed in 1996. It is a kind of a reckoning for the country, you know – and we're still dealing with it. It's sort of a collective trauma, and I think it can be confronted in a more gentle way through art.”
~ Cillian Murphy on the legacy of the Magdalene laundries
It may seem incredible that this kind of abuse went on for decades. Working from Keegan’s novel, screenwriter Enda Walsh includes several key concepts that help explain why. The first is good old fashioned Catholic guilt. Watch Bill’s reaction after he enters the convent on his delivery route, and he’s met by a sobbing girl, Sarah (Zara Devlin), who begs him to take her away. He’s quickly accosted by one of the Sisters, who rebukes him for coming inside the doors. Even though she’s far younger than Bill, he hangs his head – like a child would, getting in trouble from a stern nun at school. They’re muscle memories that can last a lifetime.
Secondly, there’s the way society is complicit in these abuses. Most of the town turns a blind eye to the women’s fate, either out of fear, or the misinformed belief that it’s ‘for their own good’. When Bill confesses what he saw to Eileen, she says It’s none of our business. Aren’t they fed, and kept warm? Given a trade? Her reaction speaks to how institutional abuse can carry on for generations – people want to believe it’s well intentioned, it’s for the best, so that they can look the other way.
What does Small Things Like These have to say about the influence of the Church?
To really personify the Church, Small Things Like These needs, for want of a better word, a “villain” – and boy do they have one in Sister Mary (Emily Watson). She’s clearly the authority figure, and presents herself with calm, steely strength. She leads a church service in an early scene, intoning that The Lord is compassion and love. Slow to anger, and rich in mercy. But we soon discover that her own actions couldn’t be much further from that ideal.
It’s Bill’s discovery of a pregnant girl locked in the convent’s dark, freezing coal shed that sparks his inner sense to push back. Wrapping her in his coat, he brings her back inside the convent to Sister Mary’s clear fury. She insists that he come in for tea. As he follows the silhouette of her gliding habit down the halls – passing girls scrubbing the floors, silent and barefoot – it's not far off horror movie iconography. When they sit down, Mielants lays out the power and control of institutions like the Church, and why it’s so difficult for ordinary people to question them.
“I saw the whole convent sequence as a metaphor of Bill entering his deepest trauma. Something happened with his mother there, and he’s not able to face it. So it’s almost like he’s entering his own unconsciousness.”
~ Director Tim Mielants
He shows it with Sister Mary’s passive facade: outwardly kind, yet subtly threatening. She asks about his daughters’ schooling. The implication? Surely Bill doesn't want to do or say anything to jeopardize his girls education now, does he? EVERYTHING Sister Mary says in this scene is wrapped in insinuation. A simple comment like Didn’t Christmas come quickly? as she hands Bill a card with cash obviously folded inside is a socio-economic hint. She’s well aware his family could use extra money. I’m sure Eileen will appreciate it. It’s no different to buying his silence, and sure enough, the grinding sound of Bill’s conscience comes roaring back.
Small Things Like These asks, What would you do if you were Bill? but in a series of subtle ways. Can he really live with himself if he sits back and fails to act? But wouldn’t he be putting his family at risk – his daughters’ future, his wife’s reputation, his own livelihood? There’s symbolism galore in the camerawork, as he walks down the dead centre of a slate-grey street at night, wet with frost – moving forward alone while the town sleeps. Later, he passes through the convent archway as a single bulb burns above him, casting a yellow pool of light. Is it a stretch to suggest it’s an angelic glow?
How does Small Things Like These address themes of generational trauma, and the power of quiet resistance?
‘Saviour’ is a role Bill hasn’t asked for, and he’s clearly reluctant to play. But Small Things soon reveals more about his past – flashbacks and memories that suggests he too needs to heal, and that speaking out against the Church could be his absolution. It taps into the concept of generational pain, a notion that’s very much at the heart of this story. And Cillian Murphy’s poignant performance (most reviews say “haunting”) expertly captures that pain.
Bill is still internally grappling with the events that shaped him as a child: the shame of being an illegitimate child, in a culture where that immediately brands you as ‘lesser than’. The confusion that stems from growing up with a ‘missing father’. And the trauma of losing his Mum, too, at an impossibly young age. As a man of the 1980s, all of those feelings are repressed – until his coal shed discovery springs all his childhood pain back to the surface.
“There is this universal thing about the movie that speaks to the entire world – when you're silent, you're complicit. When you get an institution who has an absolute power and you're not allowed to question it, eventually abuse will happen.”
~ Director Tim Mielants
Mielants explores this in the film with a series of Bill’s childhood memories, drip-feeding them through the story to lend extra resonance to the feelings he’s experiencing in the ‘now’. As Eileen hints at the new shoes she’d love for Christmas, we flash back to the younger Bill wishing for a jigsaw puzzle – then fighting tears when he unwraps a hot water bottle instead. In another scene, he dreams of playing with the groundskeeper Ned in the snow. He’s the only father figure in his life, and one of the only times we see Bill having a happy childhood.
Small Things takes the time to show that Bill was actually one of the lucky ones, being taken in as an orphan by the wealthy woman who employed his Mum. It creates an obvious question: Where would I be if she hadn't taken me in? which is suddenly awfully relevant. Talking to his wife, it’s obvious that Eileen sees the girl in the coal shed as one of those girls out there who got in trouble. But Bill can’t dismiss her as ‘one of many’ – his own Mum was one of those girls. They even share the same name, Sarah, and it’s a connection that Bill can’t ignore. He can’t do anything to change the past, but he can stop it from repeating.
So - what’s the takeaway from Small Things Like These?
It’s clear that in 1980s Catholic Ireland, the Church was sacrosanct, and the ramifications of openly questioning those in charge were very real. You might wonder, since the laundries have long since closed, why make a movie about them now? It’s a story that was clearly important enough to convince some unexpected producers to back the film: Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, under their Artists Equity banner. These filmmakers are keen to recognise that holding the past to account is important.
For many in Ireland, justice is ongoing today. While some of the real-life victims that were fictionalised in Small Things Like These did receive compensation through Ireland’s Magdalene Restorative Justice Scheme, STILL not all of that scheme’s recommendations have been put in place. And the Catholic Church refuses to take full accountability to this day, offering what its denouncers describe as “limited apologies.”
Directing just his third feature, Tim Mielants brings an assured touch here that seems far more experienced. There’s an economy to the storytelling which perfectly matches life at the time for Irish families like the Furlongs: basic, honest, and free of any special effects. Why is that effective? Because pragmatism rules the day for these characters, and emotion is buried. So when glimpses of it break through, it’s heartbreaking.
Small Things signs off with a dedication: to the 56,000 young women sent to the Magdalene institutions for "penance and rehabilitation", and the children who were taken from them. Even more shocking is the stat that these practices went on until 1996. Yes, we typed that right, NINETEEN NINETY SIX – as recently as PM John Howard residing in the lodge and fresh episodes of Seinfeld hitting the airwaves.
While that’s unconscionable, Small Things Like These isn’t an excoriation of the Church or its values. Mielants’ film isn’t shouting “look, everything they did was wrong!”, because that easy binary label doesn’t stick. His point is this: institutions that retain power by holding themselves above being questioned will always breed SOME moral corruption. It’s a closed system.
So when an entire culture is trained to look away (often in fear), what’s to stop these systems from continuing their cycles of abuse? In this story, the answer is men like Bill Furlong – not superheroes facing impossible odds. Just an everyday individual with the moral fibre to draw the line, and the quiet courage to step across it.
