“Small Things like These” Review

Evil not only triumphs when good men do nothing but when there are enough distractions for it to fester. What better time for that inhumanity to silently grow than Christmas. It is a time when communities and the media stress thinking of others while hurrying for events, presents, and Christmas dinners. If you’re already struggling, there’s little time to consider biting back against the oppressors. This is very much the case for Small Things Like These, its 1980s small-town Irish setting, and the horrors within the Magdalene Laundries, where Roman Catholics took advantage of unfortunate women.

Thinking more about these women is the quiet coal merchant Bill Furlong (Cillian Murphy). His past still haunts him, but he remains tight-lipped about it, glimpsed here and there with flashbacks of an unfortunate childhood. He has a busy home life with multiple daughters and his wife, Eileen (Eileen Walsh), who is eager for new shoes for Christmas. Sleep doesn’t come for him, his insomnia a product of both the early death of his mother and the current troubles plaguing the Irish girls of his community.

One of Bill’s clients is a convent run by the harsh Sister Mary (Emily Watson). The women in charge frown on his attempts to venture further into the halls of crying girls and wailing babies. The horror becomes more challenging to ignore when he takes notice of Sarah (Zara Devlin), a girl being abused at this organization. Sarah pleads for help when the sisters are absent, but Bill stresses that it’s not his call. This is not a case of finding an excuse. He really can’t do anything without incurring the wrath of the church. When Bill witnesses more of this abuse, he is directly threatened by Mary to keep his mouth shut. Should he speak, his daughters might not get an education. She even goes so far as to bribe him. After all, Eileen could use those shoes she’s been wanting.

This is a deeply sad film for more than its historical snapshot one of Ireland’s greatest atrocities towards women. Murphy’s performance perfectly encapsulates that quiet desperation of feeling so helpless yet so driven not to look away. Rarely does he speak his mind, as most of his concerns fall on deaf ears. His wife is perhaps the most damning, as she can see little more than her own interests. When she hears of Bill’s thoughts about the mistreated women, all she can do is stress that Bill is too sensitive and part of growing up means learning to ignore things like that. This is an ugly thought, but one that comes naturally for someone whose day-to-day concerns are that of her kids finishing her homework and that there’s enough money for food. Don’t think about the poor women being abused by the church. Just reason with yourself that such a life is better than the cold streets. That may clear your conscience enough to keep lusting after those new shoes.

But Bill cannot look away, unable to turn away from the desperation he encounters on his deliveries to the convent. He witnesses it daily and is constantly challenged to push those thoughts out, no matter how hard he scrubs it from his mind the way he scrubs the soot off his hands every evening. That’s just Irish life. There’s nothing you can do. Don’t think about it. Look away. Do your job. Why do you care about these girls? You already have daughters and should probably look after your own. Think about them. Don’t think about the tearful Sarah begging for an escape. It’s Christmas time. Think about Christmas. Attend church and think about Christ’s teachings, but don’t you dare apply them today. Keep your head down. Do your work. Buy your family presents and be happy with the house you have. It’s impossible not to see how topical such a story feels today.

Small Things like These quietly engrosses with profound sadness and guilt for how religious power seems too towering to topple. There’s a bittersweet ending to all this, where Bill finally commits to a noble act of kindness that will surely draw the ire of everybody in town. That said, there’s also a textual epilogue about how the Magdalene Laundries went on for decades, eventually ending in 1998, and later an apology for these shameful institutions in 2013. That’s far too long for such cruelty to continue in the name of government and God, utilized to justify the most grotesque of practices for women who need help. We are once more in similar times with women’s rights eroding at a fantastic rate as right-wing authorities assert their dominance for similar excuses. Tim Mielants’s film stresses how hard it can be to fight back when you’re barely scraping by, but stresses how important it is not to let those regrets linger and do something about it. It’s through Murphy that the poignant message is made clear, never getting lost in the muck of its retro Irish setting or reducing the struggle to mere melodrama. The earnestness makes this story feel as raw and relevant as it should be for our time.