Movie Review: Small Things Like These

4.5 stars out of 5

In my review of the excellent 2022 movie The Quiet Girl, I wrote that the “script is adapted from the novella Foster by Claire Keegan; will have to check out her work.” Since then I’ve indeed read the bulk of Keegan’s work, including her masterwork to date, Small Things Like These. My 5-star Goodreads review of that book:
A short story disguised as a novel, its power sneaks up on you. I had read a story by Keegan in the New Yorker and was so impressed I rushed out to buy this and a collection of her short fiction. I don’t want to say too much about this one except to say, it’s a Christmas story and a morality play and an exploration of family, specifically: what makes a family. We’re in working-class Ireland in 1985 but there’s a timeless quality here. Keegan is expert at capturing the titular small things of life.

So, for me at least, screenwriter Enda Walsh and Belgian (!) director Tim Mielants certainly had their work cut out for themselves adapting this story. The casting of Cillian Murphy as the lead, Bill Furlong, helps tremendously. The character is a family man with a gaggle of girls and is also the local coal man. Through his deliveries to the church and convent, he learns it is a “Magdalene laundry,” the real-life nun-run facilities where “bad” young women were sent to work, and their babies were taken away. (The very good Showtime series The Woman in the Wall also deals with this shame of Ireland’s too-recent history.) 

The central question becomes: Confronted with such cruelty, can Furlong stand to look the other way, and if he doesn’t, what will that mean for his work and his family? Murphy is excellent in the role, creating a quiet, pensive person who seems to be absorbing all the sorrow around him, to the point where he can barely contain it. Emily Watson has a small but key role as Mother Superior, who wields much power and influence in town. Watson downplays it very well; she is everyone’s friend but it’s crystal-clear that you should not cross her.

The film stretches out the novella with extended flashbacks to Furlong’s own youth. Unresolved family issues definitely aren’t helping adult Furlong’s anxiety quotient.

DIrector Mielants creates a very strong sense of place, resisting the temptation to rely too heavily on the small-town Irish holiday season. And by sticking pretty closely to Keegan’s book, he gives us a low-key gem of a movie.