‘Small Things Like These’ review: another powerful Cillian Murphy performance

How does an actor follow up the extraordinary Oscar-nominated success of Oppenheimer? If you’re Cillian Murphy, you go in the opposite direction in role and scale of film. Having played the necessarily talkative and erudite father of the atomic bomb leading the Manhattan project in a $100million Christopher Nolan blockbuster, Murphy tackles Bill Furlong, a laconic coalman from a small town in Wexford, south-east Ireland.

It’s approaching Christmas 1985 when we find Bill working hard to provide for his shrewd, loving wife Eileen (Eileen Walsh) and their five bright daughters. Bill, still evidently deeply traumatised by the death of his mother during his childhood, comes home covered in grime every night and takes great care to scrub his hands, the implication perhaps being he suffers misplaced guilt for her death. The Furlongs and the local townspeople are seemingly respectful, decent folk but one day Bill sees young, unmarried and pregnant Sarah (Zara Devlin) being ushered into a convent. This is especially triggering for Bill – his own mother avoided a similar fate only by being taken in by a kind and wealthy local family, who it is implied brought him up after his mother’s passing. When one freezing night Bill finds Sarah banished to the convent coalshed, he has to question whether he can stand by and allow this horror and doubtless other abuses to continue. Complicity is widespread.

The shameful history of Ireland’s so-called ‘Magdalene Laundries’, where for most of the 20th century thousands of young, often pregnant women with nowhere else to go were essentially imprisoned, stripped of their identity and worked relentlessly was investigated movingly in 2013’s Philomena, starring Judi Dench and Steve Coogan. Small Things Like These is a more sombre, slower piece. Its rich tone of regret, guilt and unspoken malice comes across in careful direction from Tim Mielants, Frank van den Eeden’s shadowy cinematography and subtle, measured performances across the board. Bill is warned about the power the nuns – and, by extension, the church – wield in the town, so his moral dilemma is a weighty one. It could cost him dearly to take a stand. In the film’s best scene, Bill is coerced into having tea with and taking money from Mother Mary (Emily Watson) to essentially buy his silence. Watson, though not on screen for more than a few minutes, is terrifying and never less than believable, insidiously threatening like a mob boss.

Though its stately pace and tough subject matter may deter some viewers, Murphy again leads with aplomb and his casting alone will likely bring a bigger audience to this intelligent adaptation of Claire Keegan’s novel of the same name. While on the set of Oppenheimer, Matt Damon saw Murphy reading the Small Things Like These script and suggested he produce with Artists Equity, the company he set up with Ben Affleck in 2022. Based on the resulting work, he would be right to be pleased with that decision.