‘Small Things Like These’: Cillian Murphy Is Brilliant In Small Irish Drama

Cillian Murphy returns to his home country of Ireland for his first post-Oppenheimer role in Tim Mielant’s Small Things Like These, a well-made character study about a family man trying to do the right thing.

Based on the history of the notorious Magdalene laundries that abused at least 30,000 women in Ireland until 1996, the film effectively portrays the systemic nature of violence through the empathetic eyes of an outsider, and asks its viewer what they would do in the same situation.

Bill Furlong (Murphy) is a troubled man. Though he runs his own coal business and has a loving family, it’s abundantly clear early into Small Things Like These that Bill holds a tremendous amount of unprocessed trauma in his life.

So when he makes a routine delivery to the local convent – run by Sister Mary, a terrific Emily Watson – and finds a girl (Zara Devlin) locked in the coal shed, it plants a seed in him to figure out what’s really going on and what it might cost him.

Like his previous, Oscar-winning role, Small Things Like These rests heavily on the shoulders of Murphy as a performer. As to be expected, he’s up to the task; the film is intimately tied to Bill’s perspective, and Murphy creates a remarkably vivid sense of character with this fairly minimal script.

The only time that the film does not focus on Murphy is when it cuts to Bill as a child, where he’s portrayed by Louis Kirwan. The tone of these flashbacks are still rather forlorn, but imbued with a distinctly child-like perspective and shift in colouring to appear brighter. Kirwan is great as a young boy trying his best to be proper, even in the face of adversity, and the way these stories interweave is genuinely compelling.

Cillian Murphy starts a post-Oscar hot streak with Small Things Like These

Naturally, the focus on Bill means that the film is not directly about the abuse at the Magdalene laundries, but instead about what happens when regular people are confronted with the naked truth of systemic abuse. Should Bill try to help this one girl? What if it was one of his daughters suffering the same fate? And most harrowingly, what difference will helping one person make?

The film’s investigation into doing what’s right is genuinely compelling, and is the most potent theme present in the film. However, as a result of its single minded approach, Small Things Like These can feel a little slow-to-go at times. Clocking in at only 98 minutes, the slow pace is obviously intentional; each decision that Bill made feels genuinely agonised over.

Part of that is thanks to the beauty of the film, courtesy of director Mielant and cinematographer Frank van den Eeden, who depict Ireland at Christmas time wonderfully. Yet the intended slowness still meant that, at least for me, the film often felt as though it was meandering somewhat, when I felt it could’ve put Bill in a few different scenarios that challenge his sense of morality.

That doesn’t prevent Small Things Like These from being a solid drama, though. Cillian Murphy solidifies his wide acting range in a much quieter performance than the one that won him an Oscar, and the film’s musings on morality, empathy and doing what’s right are more than enough to make it worth watching.

★★★½

Small Things Like These is in select cinemas now.