There’s an undeniable, otherworldly power to Cillian Murphy’s eyes.
Tim Mielants’ “Small Things Like These” takes full advantage of Murphy’s magnetic gaze to reveal veiled suffering buried deep within Irish convents in the 1980s. Based on the eponymous novel by Claire Keegan, “Small Things Like These” focuses on Bill Furlong (Murphy), a coal merchant in Ireland who, despite small monetary struggles, lives a peaceful life with his four daughters and wife, Eileen (Eileen Walsh).
However, when Bill witnesses a girl being forced into the covenant he regularly delivers coal to, he must decide whether to continue turning a blind eye to the shady operations of the convent. He is faced with a choice between maintaining his peaceful life or uprooting it to help girls and women he sees forcibly housed in the convent, whose voices are silenced by the powerful influence of the nuns in his community.
As the film is almost solely rooted in Bill’s perspective, Murphy’s performance takes center stage. Murphy commands the huge spotlight with an enviable ease. There are many times when the camera simply rests on Murphy’s face and figure, completely trusting in his ability to convey the entirety of the emotions in the scene. Murphy’s Bill is drenched in devastation and a silent anguish that screams through his features. The internal battle Bill faces with his guilt is never revealed in big outbursts of emotion, yet it lingers with the audience far after the film’s end.
A surprising standout is Emily Watson as Sister Mary, the head nun who displays a masked cruelty toward the girls housed — often forcibly — within the covenant she leads. In the little screen time she has, Watson fills it with a chilling force. While deranged is a strong word, there’s a small piece of that craze within her performance. This subtle touch is what makes seemingly innocent moments, such as the short scene of Sister Mary leading a service, feel sinister and unnerving.
Murphy and Watson excel in conveying a sense of sinister panic. In particular, the film amplifies Bill’s devastation through short flashbacks of his childhood. These flashbacks serve as glimpses of the inner workings of his mind, pulling the audience into his conflicted emotional state. However, the purpose of these flashbacks to the plot remains a mystery. I ran through several theories throughout the course of the film, at one point believing that his childhood had some connection to the nuns, only to finally conclude that it was simply a means to flesh out Bill’s character.
In building an immersive atmosphere, the film opts for a slow pace filled with patient long takes. At its best, the patience the film takes with its camerawork is gripping, sinking the audience into this mundane, yet unsettling and pained, environment that the characters operate in. There’s a trust in the performers as long close-up shots fully take in the expressions across their faces and the film’s emotional weight is all the more effective due to this spotlight on the actors.
However, the film leaves quite a few details to the imagination which, when combined with its slow pacing, creates an experience clouded with hazy confusion. This confusion disrupts the experience of leaving yourself to simply sit and take in the haunting world of “Small Things Like These.” Half of the time, I felt my brain was working overtime simply trying to understand what exactly the nuns were doing behind closed doors and how it connected to Bill’s community at large. The context of the situation is left in the dark; it’s only at the very end — when an anticlimactic ending placard provides historical context for the film — that the full picture finally becomes clear.
Nevertheless, “Small Things Like These” is an emotional gut punch and an exposing glance at a history relatively unknown outside of Ireland. It’s a potent reminder that abandoning the comfort of the mundane to help someone regain their life, rights and comforts that were stripped from them is often worth the danger and backlash of disrupting your own peace.
