Zara Devin, left, and Cillian Murphy in Small Things Like These.Enda Bowe/The Associated Press
- Small Things Like These
- Directed by Tim Mielants
- Written by Enda Walsh, based on the book of the same name by Claire Keegan
- Starring Cillian Murphy, Eileen Walsh, Michelle Fairley, Clare Dunne, Helen Behan, Emily Watson
- Classification PG-13; 98 minutes
An adaptation of Claire Keegan’s novella by the same name, Tim Mielants’s Small Things Like These is a sombre, guilt-laden account of Ireland’s Magdalene laundries, often termed “asylums,” Roman Catholic (formerly Protestant) institutions which housed so-called “fallen women” from the 18th to the late 20th centuries. Operating under the guise of consolation, these laundries were essentially workhouses for sex workers, promiscuous girls, and young women who became pregnant out of wedlock, who were forced to engage in gruelling labour as punishment. The first Magdalene laundry was created in London in 1758 and the tradition carried on in Ireland until 1996.
The first film to be produced by Cillian Murphy’s company Big Things Films, Small Things Like These is set in the modest town of New Ross in 1985 and follows Bill Furlong (Murphy), a dejected coal merchant who lives with his wife Eileen (Eileen Walsh) and their five daughters. He spends his days toting coal in a canary-coloured truck, often to the local convent, where he is increasingly put off by his observations; standing in the inky coal shed, he overhears sobbing, screaming, and witnesses a woman shuttling her resistant daughter through the front doors. After entering the convent to follow up on an invoice, an adolescent girl scrubbing the floors wails for Bill to help her escape to a nearby river. When he later shares his apprehensions with Eileen, she encourages him to drop the subject. “If you want to get on in this life, there are things we have to ignore,” she says.
These occurrences stir something in Bill, who cannot seem to square the guilt of his supposedly full life with the mistreatment of these girls. Flashbacks to a posh home at Christmastime gradually reveal how Bill was personally implicated in the existence of Magdalene laundries as a child and how his past trauma bleeds into the present. These flashbacks also reveal his appetite for the literature of Charles Dickens, a nod to Bill’s own Dickensian existence and a footpath for his hero’s journey. While his character is certainly admirable, there is something to be noted of a history of gendered violence accessed through the conscience of a benevolent man – that the laundries exist as peripheral action to Bill contending with his unremitting memory.
There is a sense of foreboding and secrecy to the entire project, with the dialogue mostly communicated in whispers and the characters exchanging stern glances at any mention of the convent. In lieu of sensationalizing the persecution of these young women, Small Things Like These compellingly casts its gaze onto the complicity of the community and the social architectures which uphold abuse. At times glacial or repetitious – there is a recurring gesture of Bill strenuously washing his dirty hands – the film adopts the bleak sensibility of this history, ultimately advancing the belief that we ought to welcome the subjugated and vulnerable into our homes – a message we might do well to receive at this moment.
In the interest of consistency across all critics’ reviews, The Globe has eliminated its star-rating system in film and theatre to align with coverage of music, books, visual arts and dance. Instead, works of excellence will be noted with a critic’s pick designation across all coverage. (Television reviews, typically based on an incomplete season, are exempt.)
