'Small Things Like These' Review

"To get on in this life, there are things you have to ignore," pleads Eileen Furlong (Eileen Walsh) to her husband Bill (Cillian Murphy) after he confesses that, while walking through the local convent to finish his coal delivery, was approached by a young girl who begged him to take her to the river so she could drown herself. The other girls within earshot didn't object to her request, their silence implying that they've all contemplated taking that leap. Like a forceful clap, and before Bill can even comprehend the choice placed upon him, the Mother Superior (Emily Watson) enters the room and rips the girl away, sternly explaining that outsiders are not allowed to talk to the women.

Eileen's words are a coping mechanism, something that the whole Irish town has taken as their mantra. But it's also emblematic of the age-old quote by their native philosopher Edmund Burke: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." There isn't any explicit fear by the townspeople that the church will seek retribution if someone speaks out. But the church occupies every facet of people's livelihood, so why would you want to bite the hand that feeds you? You can keep eating as long as you don't ask how the sausage gets made.

After going as big as you can get with Oppenheimer, including nearly $1 billion at the box office and the Oscar for Best Lead Actor, Small Things Like These is the type of intimate project that Cillian Murphy has long called home. He retains the same haunted figure he displayed as the father of the atomic bomb, but none of the hints of charm and brilliance. Bill is the quiet type, often speaking in hushed tones and looking down at his shoes. Nary a smile crosses his face, and the marks of coal stain his coat and fingers.

Director Tim Mielants relies upon Murphy's natural shellshocked state to carry this domestic drama. At nearly every turn, a long glance into someone's face is preferred over dialogue, illustrating the unspoken truths that so many people carry with them every day. And even if words are exchanged, they're often broken apart by distinct pauses.

We've often made the joke that if you removed the slow-motion sequences from a Zack Snyder film, then you'd be left with something less than feature length. That logic can be applied here with those pauses. Many movies have held my attention with much less substance before, but Mielants and screenwriter Enda Walsh, adapting from the 2021 novel of the same name, don't paint anything around the edges to keep you guessing about what's just out of sight. Even at just over ninety minutes (less when you exclude the credits), "Oh my God, get on with it!" flashed through my head on several occasions, each time with a little more anger than the last.

There are some literal pretty images, many of them playing with focus and perspective. The camera is often near-sighted, blurring out everything that's not right in front of it and refusing to be curious. Bill is the personification of this mentality, although his gaze is intermittently widened through flashbacks to his childhood. Each one answers a long-buried secret he's always wondered about.

These revelations and a stern scene between Mother Superior and Bill come late in the movie, an oasis after a vast desert. It's too little, too late, putting everything into words that we've already been led to infer. It seems that Mielants trusted his audience in the wrong areas, and we had to pay the price for it.