Small Things Like These, directed by Tim Mielants, is a moving portrayal of the story of Bill Furlong (Cillian Murphy), a coal merchant who delivers coal to the shed of a local covenant, and through his visits starts to witness the abuses of the Catholic Church against women living in the Magadalene Laundries. The film originally premiered at the Berlin Film International Film Festival in February 2024. Over the past year, Small Things Like These has made the film festival rounds to critical acclaim. The movie was just recently released in the U.K. on Nov. 1, 2024, and in the U.S. and Canada on Nov. 8, 2024. Based on the novella of the same name, the film shines in powerful performances given by its seasoned cast, but its storytelling is unsettling, since it articulates traumatic themes through the narrative of folklore.
What were the Magadalene Laundries?
The Magadalene Laundries, c. early 1900s.
According to Encylopedia Britannica, the “Magdalene Laundr[ies] were an institution in which women and girls were made to perform unpaid laundry work, sewing, cleaning, and cooking as penitence for violating moral codes.” The goal of the laundries was to “reform so-called ‘fallen women.”” They started in 18th century England and Ireland, and were originally Protestant institutions for women who worked as prostitutes. Eventually, the laundries came to be run by the Catholic Church in Ireland. By the 19th century, there were 40 laundries in Ireland. In the 20th century, the laundries went through another significant change since Ireland expanded the definition of women who were ‘fallen’ and added girls who
“were orphaned or abandoned, families who were financially unable to take care of them, women who were considered to be too flirtatious, who had been physically or sexually abused, who had physical or developmental disability, [criminals], and unwed women who had become pregnant.” (Ostberg)
Women in the laundries faced unprecedented levels of abuse. Many women were “physically and verbally abused, denied food and water, assigned new names, and [prevented from] contact with family members.” Police officers or nuns often forced escapees back after they were caught. Most notoriously, women who were pregnant were forced to give birth in the laundries. Their babies were then forcibly removed from them and adopted out frequently to families in the U.S., U.K., and Australia. René Ostberg reports that “the last laundry…located on on Seán McDermott Street in Dublin, closed down in October 1996.” Ireland is still reconciling with the legacy of the laundries today (Ostberg).
A Review of Small Things Like These
Set during Christmas 1985, Bill is married to his wife Eileen (Eileen Walsh), and they have five girls together. Bill’s regular deliveries escalate where he starts to hear and witness more and more troubling scenes at the laundries. He is isolated in his position since visitors do not frequent the covenant, and are usually not permitted to enter the laundry, except for young women who are emitted. When Bill seeks support from his wife to discuss the scenes he is witnessing, Eileen tells him to look the other way since she believes there are certain things in life one most look away from in order to survive. Even the friendly bar owner, Mrs. Keyhoe, encourages Bill “not to be on the wrong side of the sisters,” since they have the power to direct Bill’s girls’ education (Mielants).
However, Bill cannot help but become more and more troubled by everything he is witnessing. The audience is pulled into Bill’s experience of being more and more isolated from everyone in his town. Viewers struggle with Bill as we see him fighting to try and convince the town that the girls are worth saving, and against Bill since he fights with himself to do something to help the girls and would receive no social approval or support for saving the young women.
The Magadalene Laundries become a central concern in Bill’s life since his mother had given birth to him presumably out of wedlock, and had they not been taken in by Mrs. Wilson (Michelle Farley) and raised in her wealthy home, his mother could have been put in a laundry and he himself, adopted out to another family. Cillian Murphy shines in a moving performance that connects Bill’s life story to his possible fate, his role as a father, and a Christian man who yearns to do the right thing but faces unparalleled levels of psycho-social control which prevent him from doing so until the end of the film. The audience connects with Murphy’s portrayal of Bill’s healthy, compassionate masculinity which demonstrates his humanity when confronted with such a situation.
Each actor gives a subtle performances that compliment Murphy’s contemplative Bill. Elieen Walsh gives a convincing performance as Eillen Furlong, Bill’s well-meaning but dissociated wife, who struggles to connect to her husband emotionally. She centralizes her character on the mundaneness of a married mother’s of the 1980s facing in everyday life. Zara Devlin gives a moving performance as a young woman faced with the trauma of living in a laundy. Her acting ranges from big emotions of sadness to small facial expressions communicating a confused desperation as Bill tries to save her. Emily Watson gives a terrifying performance as the head sister. Though she only has a few minutes of screen time, she embodies the power of Judi Dench as Queen Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love; Dench gives such a powerful performance in the film that she is usually remembered as being on the screen longer than she was; she only had a screen time of eight minutes. Watson communicates this same power as she dangles money in front of Bill, in attempt to buy his silence.
Despite powerful performances, viewers are left to wonder about the next part of the story after the conclusion, and in this way, the film reflects the ambiguity of Irish oral storytelling tradition. Indeed, the conclusion of the film and climax of Bill’s story feels like Irish folklore or an Irish song.
Small Things Like These focuses more on the setting and mood of the story, rather than dialogue. The film certainly lacks dialogue, since there are many long scenes of close ups of Murphy with the score. Even when characters are having conversations, sometimes they are blocked out, since they are shown from the perspective of another character observing them. More dialogue would have certainly made relationships clearer between characters, but then I wonder if more dialogue would have affected the tone of the film, from perspective of the film being folklore. The viewer is not in the center of the action of the story, but rather an uncertain observer as the story unfolds; they are a listener to an oral storyteller, rather than a spectator to entertainment.
As a listener, there is one crucial plot point that leaves the audience gathered around the Christmas fire uncertain. Bill seems to have lost connection with Ned (Mark McKenna), the farmhand of Mrs. Wilson and implied lover (though not father) of Bill’s mother. When Bill’s mother dies, Mrs. Wilson becomes his primary caregiver, and Ned would still be around to have an influence in his upbringing. Bill visits the farm as an adult and presumably meets the daughter of Ned who had sold the farm, but the relationship between the two is unclear. Did the two know each other as children? Did they grow up together? Why did Ned’s daughter ultimately get the farm? In this way, the film challenges the audience as viewers to wonder, in the same wondering that has taken place around the storytelling fires in Ireland for thousands of years. Today, I invite you to watch and to wonder Bill’s story.
Small Things Like These is now available for rent on Apple, Google Play, and Amazon Prime.
Magdalene Justice Campaign, Protest Art, Ireland.