Directed by Tim Mielants, Small Things Like These is a bittersweet glimpse into the appalling history of the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland up until their final closure in 1996. Based on the novel by Claire Keegan, who worked on the script for the film alongside Edna Walsh, and starring Cillian Murphy, this story is bleak but impactful.
It follows a local coalman, Bill Furlong, who unwillingly gets wrapped up in the harsh realities of the Church’s influence. He struggles trying to navigate protecting himself and his family, maintaining peace, and doing what he believes to be right.
This film captured well the compactness of an Irish town and culture. What the story brings around repeatedly is how the hyper-awareness of others’ opinions, and the fear of these opinions, was entirely detrimental to maintaining a moral society. Everyone around Bill knew what happened in the convent, Bill was well aware. The sisters themselves knew how open they could be without it ever becoming a problem for them.
The truth of the Magdalene Laundries is that they are one of the most shameful parts of recent Irish history. Hundreds of women and children across the country were sent away to these where they were forced to work, and many of their children taken from them and adopted out to families without permission or record. The treatment that both women and children experienced at these Laundries was irrefutably cruel and the discovery of mass graves at these places has condemned the Catholic Church to an irreparable reputation in the country.
What few wish to admit, and what this story delves into, is that most people knew precisely what happened at the Laundries yet remained silent, even when young girls they knew were sent there. This was often just for being pregnant and no such penalty existed for the fathers of any of these children, just the erasure of the lives of these women as they were incarcerated and essentially enslaved.
Despite the dour reality of the narrative, Small Things Like These was a visually beautiful image of an Irish town in winter. Both warmth and cold were emphasised well in their respective shots and delivered effective tonal changes between places like Bill’s home, the pub, or the house he grew up in, with the streets, coal yard, or the convent. You could feel the life of the community jumping out of the screen throughout and the warm familiarity of Bill’s home where his wife (Eileen Walsh) and children greeted him each night.
Cillian Murphy delivered a fantastic performance as Bill Furlong, a kind-hearted man who has been beaten down by life. As an actor, Cillian Murphy has always shown incredible range and adaptability, this role was no different and he portrayed the sadness of his character so well that it left me with a sinking feeling in my stomach every time he cried, cowered, or crumbled under pressure.
This skill is what sold me on his casting for this character. He was not at all what I had envisioned whilst reading the book of the same name, yet he fit perfectly in to the story and character.
As a writer, Claire Keegan has a uniquely introspective style of writing that makes her work so deeply impactful. Her protagonists are always open and honest with the reader in this way, and so, as a fan of Keegan’s work, I had my doubts about how effective the film adaptation may be. I had previously enjoyed her novella Foster but found the Irish language adaptation An Cailín Ciúin to miss the mark narrative wise just slightly. At a reading I attended a year back, when she had just published Small Things Like These, Keegan had been asked about her thoughts on the film for her prior work. She seems to have wiped her hands clean, the piece, once in a different medium, had moved on from being hers and had become a separate piece altogether.
I decided to take this approach with me to the cinema when I watched Small Things Like These. When we expect something to be too much like the original, we overlook the changes that are necessary to adapt to a new medium. Much more internal work can be done in the pages of a book then the shots of a film. Yet a film can show you much more without needing to tell you. I did think that some subtleties of the book were lost in the film, though I suppose part of that was the point. These actions were very much being done out loud in Irish society, it is just us that chose to look away.
This piece was adapted well. The script was simple but unnerving by times. The story itself was nothing more than a brief screenshot of years of pain and suffering, but it delivered it’s point well. Even the smallest of actions can change things in a big way.
