Small Things Like These review - less is more in stirring Irish drama

There’s much to note and commend about Small Things Like These, a sensitive, gorgeously shot and moving adaptation of Claire Keegan’s acclaimed novel, about one man’s stand against the evils of Ireland’s infamous Magdalene laundries. 

But, for me, what is most striking about the film is the reminder it offers of the mystery of acting, and in particular its malleability; call it a gift, or a craft, but we too often underestimate the best of it, how extraordinary it can be for an actor to completely embody a character, real or fictional, so convincingly that an audience believes, purely and truly, and then to perform the same miracle with a completely new character, again and again. 

This time last year, Cillian Murphy was Robert Oppenheimer (pictured below), the enigmatic, tortured father of the atomic bomb; not only was this a convincing and seductive characterisation, but Murphy carried a three-hour studio epic on his shoulders. Now, the same actor is Bill Furlong, a coal merchant in an Irish town, an imagined version of countless real, unremarkable, unnoticed men. 

The working-class Irishman could not be less like the patrician American scientist, yet his inner life is conveyed with equal intricacy and power; and while the new, independently made film’s budget, shooting schedule, every practical and technical thing about it is likely miniscule compared to Oppenheimer, Murphy is again present for virtually every minute, business as usual, his talent and commitment once again at the heart of the film. 

To hold these two performances side by side is to observe a beautifully subtle feat of delineation. In broad strokes, some of these characters’ attributes are very similar: the internalisation, their emotional reticence and isolation, the silent storm behind the eyes; Murphy’s Tommy Shelby, from Peaky Blinders, would fit the same description. Yet these shared characteristics are modulated towards wholly different outcomes each time. He’s a remarkable actor. The film itself bears comparison with The Magdalene Sisters, written and directed by Peter Mullan in 2002, and perhaps the definitive indictment of the notorious institutions that flourished in Ireland for centuries. Also known as Magdalene asylums, these were run by Catholic orders, who took in so-called ‘fallen women’ – whether unmarried mothers, or deemed to be promiscuous, or simply too unruly for their families – only to abuse and exploit them. 

Mullan set his story in 1964. Keegan’s tale, adapted by Enda Walsh, takes place in 1985 (the last laundry in Ireland was not closed until 1996), in a town in County Wexford. Times are hard here, but Bill Furlong runs his own business, delivering fuel, and managing to support a family of five children. He’s a quiet man, conscientious, straightforward, a good boss. 

Like everyone in the town, Bill understands that the Catholic nuns are running a Magdalene laundry (pictured above). It’s common knowledge, and unchallenged, in a community where no-one rocks the boat, least of all against the church; and after all, these same nuns are also educating their children.

But on a dawn delivery to the convent, Bill discovers a girl tied up in the coal shed. And the sight of her suffering shakes his conscience to life, triggering both compassion and empathy, casting his thoughts back to his childhood, when his single mother was afforded far more sympathy and support, by a Protestant woman who took her and her young son in. 

Almost the entire film is focussed on Bill, his response, his memories, his wrestling with the dilemma of whether to help, or turn away from the problem. Even his wife Eileen (Eileen Walsh, pictured below, with Murphy) tells him: “If you want to get on in this life, there are things you’ve got to ignore.” 

Christmas is approaching, his children are becoming excited, the town is aglow with festive anticipation. But Bill remains troubled, distracted, his unspoken frustrations manifested in the ferocity of his shovelling coal, and in his end-of-day ritual – scrubbing the coal and dirt from his hands before joining his family – which becomes a flagellation. 

Walsh's script is incredibly sparse, and director Tim Mielants shoots it in such a way that the camera seems to be eavesdropping on characters, discreetly holding back, viewing people through windows, open doorways, from the far end of a corridor. The effect is a sort of haunted abstraction.

And rather than Bill’s discovery triggering a round of discussion, confrontation, deliberation, the story goes somewhere else entirely: inside his head; alongside all those long shots are intense close-ups, particularly of Murphy, his eyes and micro-expressions conveying Bill’s lonely confusion. 

Mielants may well have come to this assignment via Peaky Blinders, but he’s also helmed the semi-historical horror drama The Terror, and Patrick, an eccentric Belgian comedy whose hero is an emotionally challenged handyman on a nudist camp. He’s extremely capable at creating an atmospheric milieu, and in revealing outsiders lacking in communication skills. 

For me, the flashbacks here feel a little laboured and over-extended, too many scenes of the young Bill, already awkward, viewing the adults around him with curiosity and concern. The strongest work is in the story's present. There’s something magical in the evocation of the town, its streets and shop windows, the sense of the community enjoying the season, while at times Mielants and cinematographer Frank van den Eeden transform the same streets into zones of anxiety and intimidation, the townsfolk congregating around Bill as they sense he’s about to challenge the status quo. 

Dramatically, the film’s strongest scene involves Bill’s first effort at an intervention, in the convent, which pits him against the formidable Sister Mary (a typically terrific Emily Watson, pictured above, like Murphy demonstrating the value of less as more), who sits the man down before a roaring fire, with a cup of tea, before handing him a Christmas card stuffed with cash. When she concludes her bribe with the words, “That’s us done, I’d say,” her assurance speaks to the chilling complicity that can take place between church and community.

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