Small Things Like These

Small Things Like These (2024) is a quiet, haunting and beautifully controlled Irish drama, directed by Tim Mielants and based on Claire Keegan’s acclaimed, Booker Prize-shortlisted novella. Set in a small Irish town at Christmas in 1985, it stars Cillian Murphy — Oscar winner for Oppenheimer — as Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and father who gradually becomes aware of the abuse taking place inside the local convent, part of Ireland’s notorious Magdalene Laundry system. Rather than turning this history into conventional melodrama, the film asks a more unsettling question: what does an ordinary, essentially decent person do when confronted by an injustice that everyone around him has learned not to see? Murphy is extraordinary precisely because he does so little outwardly; guilt, fear, memory and growing moral determination seem to pass across his face almost without words. The film was extremely well received, and currently has an excellent 94% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes. (Rotten Tomatoes⁠)

But what really makes Small Things Like These exceptional is its filmmaking. Frank van den Eeden’s cinematography turns wintry Ireland into something simultaneously beautiful and oppressive: dark streets, cold blue-grey daylight, coal-blackened hands and dim interiors make the film feel almost like a series of paintings. Even more remarkable is the sound design. Distant voices, crying babies, footsteps, machinery, television noise and sudden stretches in which almost everything disappears except Bill’s breathing create an extraordinary sense that the horrors of the convent are always present, even when we cannot see them. (Roger Ebert⁠) It’s deliberately slow and understated, but that restraint is its strength: this is a film about institutional power, collective silence and the enormous significance of one seemingly small act of solidarity. Beautifully photographed, brilliantly acted and incredibly atmospheric, it is the kind of film that quietly gets under your skin and stays there long afterwards.

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/small-things-like-these-film-review

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