Small Things Like These – Film Review
by Frank L

Director Tim Mielants
Writers Enda Walsh, Claire Keegan
Stars Cillian Murphy, Patrick Ryan, Peter Claffey

In 1985, Ireland was on the verge of a tectonic change. The hegemony of the religious over all aspects of Irish life was beginning to crack with, for example, the publication in that year of “The Children of the Poor Clares” by Mavis Arnold and Heather Laskey. There would be many more grim revelations to follow. Small Things Like These (written by Claire Keegan 2021 and now adapted with Enda Walsh for the screen) is set just before the revelations that would change societal values in Ireland beyond recognition.

Bill Furlong (Cillian Murphy) and Eileen (Eileen Walsh), are the parents of five daughters. He earns his living as a self-employed coalman delivering fuel to various houses and institutions which includes the local convent that houses young women who work in the laundry. The neighbouring school, which his daughters attend, is also run by nuns. Bill sees, by chance, a young woman being manhandled apparently by her mother as she resists entering the convent. What he sees disturbs him. During his deliveries to the convent, he comes across a young girl Sarah (Zara Devlin) hidden in a coal shed. As a result, he engages with the Reverend Mother Sister Mary (Emily Watson) who by subtle and not-so-subtle means shows where power lies.  He thinks about his upbringing with his single mother who lived and worked in a local big house. Furlong ponders about his own past and what he now sees.

This is a meditative film as Bill is shown driving his truck in damp weather, lugging coal off the back of his truck and then when the day’s work is done returning to his home to wash the dirt off his face and hands. He is often alone with his thoughts. There are flashbacks to his childhood. But Bill knows he has seen “small things” which are of substance. The rest of the town chooses to avert their eyes and join in the outward manifestations of Christian joy such as the celebrations leading up to Christmas but Bill is beginning to join up the dots.

While the supporting cast delivers spot-on performances the film centres on Bill as a gentle, thoughtful man whose primary concern is to support his wife and family but is sufficiently independent to query the so-called order which dominates all of their lives. Watson’s Sister Mary is a chilling example of skin-deep kindness hiding a merciless institutional coldness. Murphy’s gestures and the gaze of his eyes capture intuitively what a man of some conscience can discern in this abnormal normality. He is gentle and undemonstrative but also insightful with an enquiring mind who is beginning to question what is accepted.

Keegan’s An Cailín Ciúin 2022 was memorably adapted to film. Here is another fine adaptation of her work of which she and Walsh are entitled to be immensely proud. It captures the rigidity of life for a young family in a provincial town in Ireland a mere forty years ago. It is often displayed in brown and greys but it is subtle and unsettling. It is a film not to be missed.