Berlinale Review: “Small Things Like These”

It’s probably too pat to say so, but it really is about the small things: the tiniest occurrences that can trigger a memory that can in turn prompt emotions normally kept tucked down deep inside to roil to the surface. Irish writer Claire Keegan’s short story Foster was adapted into a wrenching film directed by Colm Bairéad titled The Quiet Girl a couple years ago, one whose low-key nature and familiar plot line served to cut right to the core of its screenplay’s intense emotions (its effectiveness led not just to widespread critical acclaim; it became the first Irish movie to be nominated for the Best International Film Oscar at the Academy Awards). 

Small Things Like These, which is based on a novella by Keegan, is similarly a slow burn. The story is set in a small Irish town around Christmas 1985— the sort of town where everyone knows everyone and everybody’s business, where the warm glow of the festive holiday lights (the film’s cinematography is beautifully textured) around town masks more sinister goings-on— and follows coal merchant Bill Furlong (Cillian Murphy). Director Tim Mielants (who previously worked with Murphy on the series Peaky Blinders) makes effective use of framing and shot composition to illustrate the nature of Bill’s suffocating life and increasingly fragile mental state. Repetitive images include Bill driving his truck full of coal back and forth, every day the same, reflections in mirrors as a way of looking inward, and gazing through windows, where every peak seems to reveal some shady secret. Mielants continues this almost voyeuristic trend, this idea of looking but particularly looking where we shouldn’t, by also frequently framing his characters in narrow doorways, particularly inside the cozy home Bill shares with his wife (Eileen Walsh) and five daughters. Finances, especially with the holidays approaching, are a concern for them, but Bill has other things on his mind. One of his customers is the Catholic church, which operates a convent for young woman; in reality, its one of Ireland’s numerous, infamous Magdalen laundries, where so-called “fallen women” (not merely prostitutes, but woman who were abused, seduced, or merely had sex out of wedlock) were locked up and forced to work under exceedingly oppressive conditions. While the nature of the operation and the sort of inmates admitted shifted over time, the institutions remained in place until around 1996, accepted as they were by the country’s largely conservative make-up.

Bill inadvertently sees some things he wasn’t supposed to at the church as he goes about his business (girls, smudged with dirt, screaming for release), and the Mother Superior (a chilling Emily Watson) and other nuns are quick to wave him away or buy him off. It’s at this point that Small Things Like These becomes a story about standing up for what’s right; Bill is told by other townspeople and even his wife that the church has its “fingers in every pie,” that if he stirs the pot too much by refusing to allow things to stay the way they are that he may even be jeopardizing his daughters’ opportunity to get into school. Where in another film this conflict may have culminated in some rousing call to action, Mielants maintains the same slow and steady pace, allowing the small moments of kindness to speak for themselves.

The film also occasionally flashes back to Bill’s childhood in an attempt to establish a connection between his past and his present anxiety (it’s heavily alluded to that Bill’s mother gave birth to him when she was quite young, and unmarried). But it’s when the story attempts these larger leaps that it starts to crumble under the weight of it all; the connection between past and present is tenuous at best, and the occasionally over-wrought score tries too hard to wring emotions from the audience that aren’t there. It’s in the present time where Small Things Like These tugs the most, and a lot of that hinges on Murphy’s performance. Again, he’s low key; arguably too much so. But there’s such exhaustion sunk deep within him (his wife comments directly on it some time into the film) present in his slow movements, quiet voice, and soulful eyes that can rarely seem able to meet another person’s. Murphy is currently premiering this film in between publicity and awards campaigning for Oppenheimer, his stoic lead performance in which garnered him his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. There are some noticeable similarities between the two characters, namely in the way they both hold their true feelings close to their chest. But as Bill, Murphy is able to let some of that leak out more perceptively, in moments of vigor or times where he cannot hold his sadness in (turns out that Murphy is a master in the art of the single teardrop). He’s so riveting to watch at all times because of the delicate shifts he makes to demonstrate Bill’s feelings, none more effective than in the film’s abrupt yet tender and perfectly subdued finale. Small Things Like These unfortunately fails to really convey the horrors of the Magdalen laundries, nor does it connect that conflict well enough to Bill’s inner turmoil, to be wholly effective. But it’s a solid showcase for Murphy as well as a portrait of small town Ireland that feels lived-in despite its slightness; those small things, at least, are worth celebrating.

Small Things Like These had its world premiere as the opening night film of the 74th Berlinale on February 15. Runtime: 96 minutes.