Small Things Like These Review: Cillian Murphy’s Haunting Star Turn

On the surface, Small Things Like These looks like a modest little film – a character study about a working class man in 1980s Ireland who discovers something sinister lurking in his community. But peek behind the curtains and you’ll find so much more. Belgian director Tim Mielants, best known for his work on Peaky Blinders, joins forces with Irish playwright Enda Walsh and a top-notch cast to bring Claire Keegan’s acclaimed novella to life.

At the story’s core is Cillian Murphy’s quiet yet anguished performance as Bill, a coal delivery man and family father who chances upon abuse happening at the local convent. As Bill grapples with whether to speak out against the Catholic church’s wrongdoings, the film evolves into a thoughtful examination of conscience and complicity. Mielants deftly handles the heavier themes while enveloping us in the cold hues of small town life, where faith and fear walk hand-in-hand.

Beyond Murphy’s complexity, Emily Watson leaves a chilling impression as the convent’s Mother Superior in a confrontation laced with unspoken threats. Supporting talent like Eileen Walsh as Bill’s pragmatic wife also stirs up moral questions about the secrets we keep to preserve harmony.

In the shadows of the church spires and Magdalene laundry walls, Mielants unspools a understated yet gripping Irish drama. One which confronts the sins of the past and reminds us that sometimes we must follow our conscience, even when it means disrupting the silence.

Trapped Between Truth and Self-Preservation

The time is December 1985. The place is New Ross, a sleepy harbor town nestled in the southeast corner of Ireland. Our guide to this winter-struck community is Bill Furlong, played by Cillian Murphy. Bill fills his days delivering coal and fuel to local homes and businesses from dawn until dusk. At night, he returns to his wife Eileen (Eileen Walsh) and their five lively daughters.

A man of few words and many worries, Bill goes through the motions of his routine with a building sense of unease. He scrubs the coal dust from his hands with tortured vigor each evening, as if trying to scour some unspoken sin from his soul. Through flashbacks, we learn that Bill was born out of wedlock himself, but taken in as a child by a wealthy widow named Mrs. Wilson (Michelle Fairley). Haunted by the stigma of his youth, Bill has grown into a stoic but sensitive figure balancing quiet personal demons with an instinct to protect the vulnerable.

The catalyst for action comes when Bill witnesses the Mother Superior (Emily Watson) dragging a young pregnant woman into the local Magdalene convent laundry. He brings the distraught girl back inside for safety’s sake, only to be summoned for afternoon tea by the imperious Watson. Their charged conversation, filled with thinly-veiled threats, makes clear the Catholic church’s hammerlock on the community. Those who even dare to peek behind the laundry doors risk not just their standing, but their very livelihood.

Tormented by what he now knows, Bill attempts to gently raise the church’s sins with his pragmatic wife Eileen. Her defensive response closes the door on further discussion, forcing Bill to grapple alone with conflicting loyalties to faith, family and conscience. As chilling revelations multiply, this introspective man faces an impossible choice pitting moral courage against the code of silence. Will he defy the powerful church and break that silence to right heartbreaking wrongs? Or will he join the conspiracy of buried truth for self-preservation?

Navigating the Moral Labyrinth

At its core, Small Things Like These is a parable about finding the courage to listen to one’s conscience, even when it means challenging powerful institutions and social norms. Bill’s journey tackles universal questions about guilt, complicity and the tensions between self-preservation and moral obligation.

By setting the drama against the backdrop of Ireland’s Magdalene laundries, director Tim Mielants and writer Enda Walsh situate these resonant themes within two interconnected contexts – Catholic doctrine and Irish culture. The laundries, which operated from the 18th to 20th centuries, were Church-run workhouses where young unmarried mothers were effectively imprisoned and forced into unpaid labor.

An estimated 30,000 women were confined in these bleak institutions, subjected to physical abuse and deprivation while their children were put up for adoption. Even as similar asylums closed worldwide, Ireland’s last Magdalene laundry run by Catholic nuns remained open until 1996. Irish society turned a blind eye to these atrocities even amid growing evidence, prioritizing the status quo over confronting ugly truths.

It’s this culture of denial that provides the tense moral web for Bill to navigate. The Catholic church’s vice-grip on Irish life in the 1980s permeates every frame, with spires visibly looming over the town as daily life orbits around local pubs, schools and shops. Dissenters are quickly whipped back into line through social pressure and thinly-veiled threats. After Bill glimpses the convent’s sinister reality, he turns first to his wife Eileen for support. Her defensive response speaks volumes about internalized notions of feminine virtue and the engrained impulse to avoid rocking the boat.

Bill’s journey thus evolves into a parable about the courage to follow one’s moral compass even – or especially – when society at large insists on looking the other way. It’s about rediscovering one’s voice and agency. And fundamentally, it’s about deciding who we are – silent witnesses or brave truth-tellers – when we come face-to-face with grave injustice. Derivative of real monstrous crimes, Small Things Like These provides a resonant template for introspection about blind spots today regarding violations of human rights or dignity.

Capturing Quiet Desperation

In directing Small Things Like These, Tim Mielants brings an outsider’s perspective that sharpens the focus on both intimacy and otherness. Known for his work on Peaky Blinders and Patrick, the Belgian helmer adapts his style to the cloistered Irish environs. The result is a tightly coiled drama simmering with moral tension.

Working with cinematographer Frank van den Eeden, Mielants casts his wintry palette right from the opening montage. New Ross emerges in frostbitten hues – muted grays and blues – with dampened streets, peat hills and rooftops converging towards the looming spires of Catholic authority. The church visibly shadows daily life, its reach amplified by the limited setting; we circle repeatedly through the same high street, pubs, shops and cottages.

Through repeating visual motifs like Bill’s evening hand-scrubbing, Mielants telegraphs his protagonist’s desperate, near-Sisyphean struggle to cleanse himself of an invisible stain. The camera lingers on Cillian Murphy’s anguished eyes as he strains under the weight of buried trauma and fresh revelation. Meanwhile quick-cut flashbacks lend context, contrasting Bill’s outward composure with memories of childhood ridicule over his illegitimate origins.

Mielants’ most indelible sequences occur within the convent itself, shifting from wintry realism to gothic horror. Our first glimpse of the convent’s exterior suggests a looming, faceless institution with secrets sealed behind fortress-like walls. Inside, the Mother Superior’s office oozes menace and manipulation, shadows dancing across her rigid face. The few moments we spend watching Bill wrestle with his conscience in this cavernous maze leave us chilled and unsettled.

Through disciplined composition and unrelenting atmosphere more than overt stylistic flourish, Mielants constructs his moral crucible. One where silence and suffering hauntingly fill the void left by unspoken truths.

Bruised Souls Baring Their Scars

At the heart of Small Things Like These lies Cillian Murphy’s masterclass in emotional introspection. Displaying his signature ability to express churning melancholy through micro-expressions, Murphy paints a portrait of bruised humanity as Bill Furlong. Stoic yet sensitive, tender yet tormented, his delivery reveals quiet fathoms of pain from the film’s opening moments. We sense Bill buckling under the combined weight of bygone trauma, daily drudgery, and struggles to reconcile memories with middle-aged contentment.

Murphy’s largely interior performance relies on subtle gestures and facial tension to hook us into Bill’s escalating crisis of conscience. As revelations multiply and the church’s institutional sins come to light, Murphy externalizes Bill’s moral anguish through restless hands scrubbed raw and tightened jaws choking back words. In a critical confrontation with Sister Mary, Murphy’s trembling body language viscerally conveys Bill’s dread and revulsion. That Murphy can compellingly carry a drama largely through silence and isolation is no small feat.

By contrast, Emily Watson makes a profound impact in limited but pivotal screentime as the Mother Superior. Exuding menace and manipulation beneath a carapace of manners, Watson sends a bone-deep chill through the screen during a charged tea invitation. Her superficial hospitality barely masks the coercion and danger simmering underneath. Among an excellent roster of Irish talent including Eileen Walsh as Bill’s pragmatic wife, Watson represents the cold vice strangling empathy and conscience.

In adapting Claire Keegan’s acclaimed novella, director Tim Mielants and playwright Enda Walsh have created a resonant template. One which provides Cillian Murphy intimate canvas to impart quiet force and Wells, Watson and other co-leads space to flesh out this wounded community. Their collective work makes Small Things Like These feel less an enactment of history than a nerve-touching glimpse into tragically universal patterns of power, silence and human frailty.

Transferring Rich Subtext to Screen

In translating Claire Keegan’s acclaimed novella Small Things Like These for the screen, Irish playwright Enda Walsh shoulders the challenge with aplomb. Known for films like Hunger and theatrical works such as Disco Pigs, Walsh has a gift for teasing searing drama from sparse, stripped-down dialogue. He delivers no less here, crafting pointed conversations that lay bare simmering undercurrents.

Working in close tandem with director Tim Mielants, Walsh transplants much of Keegan’s piercing prose intact while taking considered license to heighten the stakes for cinema. We lose the reassuring insight into protagonist Bill Furlong’s thoughts that the book provides. In its place arise more fulsome flashbacks to Bill’s childhood wounds, reframing his muted torment as the product of early traumas. Where Keegan’s Bill discovers the convent’s awful secret through a poor girl’s shy confession, Walsh maximizes dramatic surprise by revealing it through Bill’s fateful glimpse of the Mother Superior’s cruelty.

Such deviations help translate the essence of Keegan’s moral inquiry from page to screen while adapting its gaze for a more visual medium. And throughout, Walsh’s dialogue preserves the disturbing yet dignified power of the original language. When Bill attempts to gently broach reports of convent crimes over dinner, or the Mother Superior icily reassures him the school has ample room for his daughters, razor-sharp care for reputation and threat lurk underneath. No melodrama needed when what’s unsaid screams louder than words.

The result is a cinematic rendering that retains the consuming poise and intimacy of great prose through confident creative license. One where Enda Walsh’s intuitive grasp of subtext sublimely sharpens our view into veiled Irish souls.

Speaking Truth to Power’s Corruption

Simmering with moral outrage and bruised humanity, Small Things Like These peers into Irish souls to locate quiet fathoms of grace. Director Tim Mielants, guiding talent like Cillian Murphy and Emily Watson, constructs a haunting fable about consolation and complicity from historic Irish sins. One which succeeds as parable, character study and unflinching confrontation with institutional cruelty, all cloaked in evocative beauty.

At its heart shines Murphy’s anguished portrait of conscience awakening to fervent purpose. His subtle descent from brooding outsider into bold dissenter remains gripping despite – or due to – Bill’s trademark silence. And the questions raised about personal costs and moral courage land with universal resonance.

In elegantly adapting Claire Keegan’s piercing prose to screen, Mielants and Enda Walsh mount an extraordinary inquiry into human frailty under patriarchal corruption. One which reminds that shadows thrive only when the brave refuse light. And that radiance persists if we nurture our conscience over conformity, elevating dignity over power’s Status quo. However incremental the steps, this small Irish fable urges us on towards redemptive illumination.

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