Review: “Small Things Like These”

Cillian Murphy delivers a powerful performance as a man facing an existential moral dilemma

On the heels of his Oscar-winning performance in “Oppenheimer,” Cillian Murphy delivers a can’t-take-your-eyes-off-of-him, tragedy-filled portrayal of Bill Furlong, in “Small Things Like These.” Furlong sells and delivers coal in a small village in 1985 Ireland. He supports a large family, barely, in a job filled with drudgery, and several scenes show him scrubbing his dirty hands at the end of the day, trying to clean coal dust and monotony from his life.

His life is upended one day when he sees a young woman being dragged, screaming, into a building of the local convent, headed by the autocratic superior, Sister Mary. It is one of the infamous Magdalene Laundries, institutions run by orders of Roman Catholic nuns as homes and profit-making laundry facilities.

As one review explains, the unmarried women, many of whom had become pregnant, “gave birth, then had their babies taken from them. They were forced to work without pay in conditions so wretched that some died. The acts committed at these institutions were so egregious that the Irish government apologized and established a National Centre for Research and Remembrance on the site of the last institution to close.”

This experience triggers flashbacks for Bill. He was born out of wedlock but was fortunate in that a kind woman took in his mother to serve as a housekeeper. Yet he is still haunted by the memories, including the untimely death of his mother.

Delivering an invoice for coal to the monastery one day, Bill glimpses the treatment of the young women. One rushes to him to plead desperately for her release from the convent. Another day, dropping off a bag of coal, he finds the same woman freezing in the shed, having made a temporary escape. Sister Mary invites Bill in for tea, bribing him with some Christmas money, but also sounding a clear warning: If Bill speaks of what he has seen, his daughters might not be able to attend the convent school.

At this point in Ireland, as described by Irish novelist John McGahern (quoted in this review), “the State had become a theocracy in all but name. The Church controlled nearly all of education, the hospitals, the orphanages, the juvenile prison systems, the parish halls. Church and State worked hand in hand.”

Bill’s wife warns him about going against the power of the nuns; a kindly pub owner also warns him. So Bill spends much of the movie in a kind of moral panic. He cannot gather himself to participate in Christmas cheer. His flashbacks are debilitating. Often, ambient sound drops out, leaving us hearing only Bill’s labored breathing as he goes about his day.

Matters come to a head one day when he again discovers the young woman in the coal shed. This time he decides to act, throwing his jacket over her and taking her home with him.

Is it “small things like these”— acts of selfless moral courage—that prevent the world from totally falling apart? That is certainly one conclusion.

But the finale of the movie is ambiguous, with Bill’s story ending just as he takes the woman into his house to meet his family, the warm interior lighting framing his head. What price will Bill pay for this virtuous action? Perhaps he will lose his job, his house. His children may be kicked out of school. Here is the core question of the movie: How much is his act of moral courage worth? How much is any act of moral courage worth?

As the bells of the convent ring out at the very end of the movie, are they celebrating Bill’s decision? Or are they a mocking victory, ominous signs of the ruin that may be visited upon his family for taking a stand?

NOTE: “Small Things Like These” is now streaming on Amazon Video.