SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE

Led by a quiet Cillian Murphy performance Small Things Like These doesn’t simply go small, the picture goes minimalist to the extreme in terms of plot, emotions and just about every other aspect.

At first sight Small Things Like These has plenty going for it. The movie handles a touchy subject – the infamous Magdalene asylums – with poise and subtlety. The sound design is impeccable. And director Tim Mielants channels a realist style not dissimilar to Ken Loach, smartly focusing his camera on the always interesting face of lead actor Cillian Murphy.

Yet there is something about the film that just doesn’t gel. The narrative is weirdly slight to start with, as the coal and gas salesman, played my Murphy, tries to dissociate from the things he sees and knows about the nuns who take in girls to ‘re-educate’ them. Throughout the film he is at times frustratingly passive and when he does finally spring into action it never feels like an earned emotional reward for the character.

Another thing that doesn’t work, is a flashback structure that puzzles together some pieces from the lead character’s youth. Not only are the flashbacks at first rather confusing (it takes a while to realise these events are not happening concurringly with the main plot), they add precious little insight into Cillian Murphy’s past traumas.

And then we get to the movie’s main problem, one that had the entire audience I saw the film with gasping, and not in a good way. Once you think Small Things Like These will finally kick into a higher narrative and emotional gear, the movie just ends, annoyingly abruptly, as though the projectionist had forgotten to add the third act. It plays into the film’s aim to tackle the story subtly, but here the movie makes an unforgivable faux pas.

So while I cannot call Small Things Like These a bad film per se, I struggle to call it a bona fide film at all. It plays out more like an opaque reminiscence of repressed memories than as a thought-provoking motion picture, which surely cannot have been the filmmakers’ goal.

release: 2024

director: Tim Mielants

starring: Cillian Murphy, Emily Watson, Michelle Fairley, Eileen Walsh