SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE

Wednesday, February 26, 2025
Small Things Like These 2024
Location: SilverCity
Showtimes: 6:30 & 8:30 pm


Director: Tm Mielants
Cast: Cillian Murphy, Eileen Walsh, Emily Watson
Running Time: 98 minutes
Language: English


Berlin International Film Festival: Best Supporting Performance: Emily Watson.  5 other nominations. 


“[Murphy's] is a marvel of a performance, extremely expressive and yet deeply inward-looking.” Sheila O’Malley, rogerebert.com


Based on Claire Keegan’s novella, “Small Things Like These,” is an intimate character study, set in Ireland, 1985. (NOSFA audiences will recall Keegan as the author of “Foster,” which inspired last season’s “The Quiet Girl.”)


Cillian Murphy is Bill Furlong, a local coal and wood fuel distributor. He and his wife (Eileen Walsh) are raising five daughters. As Christmas approaches, while making a delivery to the Good Shepherd Convent, Bill witnesses a chilling sight: a distraught, screaming young woman forcibly dragged into the church by her mother and several nuns. Bill suspects she is an unwed mother.


The scene forces Bill to recall his own troubled past where he was bullied for being the son of an unwed mother. When he was young, Bill and his single mother lived on her employer’s farm. This explains his inclination towards solitude. Murphy wordlessly conveys s variety of emotions. 


However, given the influence wielded by the Catholic Church in his community, Bill is uncertain how he should react to what he saw at the convent. His conscience is further torn when he happens upon the same young woman, Sarah, freezing in a coal shed adjacent to the church.


Aware of what Bill may have witnessed, Mother Superior Sister Mary (Emily Watson) invites him for tea. A superficial cordial air is undercut by the subtle intimidation Sister Mary wields. Bill is soberly aware that she will do whatever in her power to run the convent---suspected to be one of the infamous Magdalene Laundries--and preserve her stature.  


Director Mielants and his cinematographer Frank van den Eeden do an impressive job of illustrating the dynamics of the town through detailed, authentic visual language.  


The film is further indictment of the Magdalene Laundries which unbelievably operated as late as 1996, where many unwed mothers were forced into unpaid labour, giving up their babies for adoption. ​