GoMovieReviews Rating: ★★★
Rated: M
Directed by: Tim Mielants
Based on the Novel Written by: Claire Keegan
Produced by: Cillian Murphy, Matt Damon, Catherine Magee, Alan Moloney, Drew Vinton, Jeff Robinov
Starring: Cillian Murphy, Emily Watson, Eileen Walsh, Michelle Fairly, Clare Dunne, Zara Devlin.
‘Don’t you ever question it?’
Small Things Like These is about the open secret of young women held in a convent to work as they rehabilitate after conceiving a child out of wedlock.
The girls have to give up their baby’s then work in the convent like prisoners for their sins.
The film is shot from the perspective of Bill Furlong (Cillian Murphy). A father of five daughters and the son of an unwed mother.
It’s 1985.
Bill wakes at dawn to shovel coal.
A church bell rings through the pre-dawn darkness.
A dog barks, crows caw, as the grey day begins in the small town of New Ross, Ireland.
The boys in the town chop wood or work for Bill, shovelling coal.
It’s a community that eats dinner together at the pub.
Bill drives a truck around to deliver coal. And that’s when he sees her (Zara Devlin). From the shadows. A girl crying, wanting to get away.
She doesn’t want to go into the convent.
This is a quiet film. There’s no soundtrack. Just the sound of rain as Bill gets up in the night to watch the world through a window, or the sound of a running tap as he washes the coal dust from his hands before greeting his family around the dinner table.
Bill flashes back to his childhood, his mother.
Seeing the girl not wanting to go into the convent brings it all back.
His wife (Eileen Walsh) knows something’s wrong, asking why he’s so quiet.
‘Don’t you ever question it?’ He asks.
But it’s none of their business. It’s not their girls who are in trouble.
Bill worries.
And it’s strange because the film’s about the girls in the convent but the story of the girls is hidden. Just a glimpse of the young girl who manages to escape, only to be taken back to the convent again.
This is more the reaction of Bill seeing what’s going on. Of questioning the control the catholic church has over the town which is why the town doesn’t question the punishment.
And although hidden, secret and quiet, the film is captivating, the feeling from Bill pulling the story along and the camerawork telling the story as it follows this character experiencing deeply shifting emotions:
The window;
The shot behind the truck’s cabin;
The slow movement through a kitchen to see outside to a mother;
The snow falling with a stoic unmoving tree in view.
There’s a powerlessness in the community. Families are poor, struggling to pay for Christmas. But there’s power in feeling what’s right and what’s wrong.
Small Things Like These isn’t a tearjerker, more an emotional undercurrent that shifts into a wave to build into an act of kindness.
A quality slow burn.