Small Things Like These: A Different Kind of Christmas Story
Calder Wysong ’27
“If you want to get on in this life, there are things you have to ignore.”
Tom Mielants’ new film Small Things Like These, inspired by Claire Keegan’s novel of the same title, presents a conflict that embodies this quote. It’s a film about the struggle between complacency and control, and how one person stands up against the broken system that’s been established. And yet, of all things, it’s a conflict between a coal salesman and a group of nuns at the local convent.
The year is 1985. Bill Furlong (Cillian Murphy) is the salesman and owner of a coal business in the small, rural town of New Ross in Ireland. He’s quiet and reserved, but a hard worker, spending his days shoveling coal into sacks and delivering them around town. But he’s also a family man, providing a steady income for his wife and five daughters. Despite not having an incredible income, he’s a devout Catholic, which gives his daughters the advantage of being able to attend the only school in town. And, with the Christmas season coming up, all seems to be well for him.
And yet, everything changes for Bill on a seemingly mundane visit to the local convent. As he’s dropping his delivery of coal in the storage room, he becomes witness to the atrocities happening there — for example, an unwed pregnant girl being dragged inside by her mother and a nun. Yet, what he’s seeing isn’t just limited to New Ross: The Catholic Church dubbed these convents as “Magdalene Laundries,” which had been established throughout the country from the 18th to the 20th century by the church. They were run as profit-making asylums, in which thousands of “fallen women” — women who were pregnant and unmarried — were held inside and forced to work under horrific conditions to supply money for the church. The film is dedicated to the 56,000 young women who were held in the laundries from 1922 to 1998 for what the Catholic Church dubbed “penance and rehabilitation.”
Despite being unsettled by what he’s seen, Bill seems to wonder if he’s done something wrong by leaving the convent that day. Everyone else in New Ross seems perfectly content with the knowledge that these girls are being abused so close to home, and yet Bill is unable to live with that fact. As the movie progresses, Bill finds himself presented with a choice: to remain silent to his town’s inner horrors, or to do what he believes is right.
Cillian Murphy’s acting, along with the brilliant performances by Emily Watson (Sister Mary, the Mother Superior of the convent) and Eileen Walsh (Eileen Furlong, Bill’s wife), heighten the quality of the film. Seeing Murphy’s quiet desperation over the film’s hour-and-a-half runtime gives his character profound depth : he conveys much emotion through little dialogue. One scene depicts him washing his hands in the throes of a flashback to his mother’s traumatic death. Without any dialogue, Murphy expresses Bill’s sadness and anger through the act of violently scrubbing his hands at a soot-blackened sink. And, really, that sort of emotion is only heightened through Bill’s interactions with his wife and the convent’s Mother Superior. Although we only see these two characters on screen with Bill, their performances are brilliant in their own right. When we see Bill with his wife, Eileen, the majority of their interactions are quiet, yet poignant — whether they’re chatting as Bill burns his children’s letters to Santa Claus, or talking late at night about the convent’s horrors, their exchanges feel true and intimate. Emily Watson’s performance as Sister Mary is also phenomenal, despite her appearance in only one fifteen-minute scene. Her portrayal as the antagonist, as well as an embodiment of the church’s larger forces, make her one interaction with Bill incredibly disturbing. As the two are inside the convent, drinking tea and discussing his children’s future, the atmosphere created by their dynamic almost feels like a horror movie — not your conventional thriller, but the sort of horror that you can only find in human nature.
The cinematography is also excellent, especially in the context of Bill’s character. Much of the movie doesn’t directly follow Bill’s actions face-first. In fact, much of the film follows him from behind, or from a side perspective, or even shifts away from him entirely. That cinematic choice is, in many ways, a personification of Bill’s character and the themes of the movie overall: quiet, reserved, and humble. The loudest things in the movie are the geese which honk at Bill whenever he enters the convent.
I often think of that line that Bill’s wife says to him as they’re talking in the darkness of their room; “If you want to get on in this life, there are things you have to ignore.” Despite this movie’s non-contemporary focus, so many of its themes and ideals apply to where we are in the world right now. It’s not a movie to fit one time or place or background. And I think part of this movie’s influence begins with the acknowledgement of that fact by audiences. With the holiday season coming up, Small Things Like These should make us ask ourselves; Are we willing to do the one small, but right thing for each other?