Small Things Like These is the kind of film that doesn’t have a grand resolution, a dramatic climax, or a widespread shift that would change the world forever. What happens might not even change the country, or the town Bill Furlong lives in. But that doesn’t mean the film is unimportant. While Cillian Murphy masterfully reckons with Furlong’s conscience, the community is silent… So too is the score, but it challenges the automatic flinch when we hear the background– the screams, the wailing, and the pain. It challenges the way we, and the town of New Ross, try to make sense of the sounds, explaining it away with more plausible, more palatable reasons, or justifying them with excuses. Small Things Like These can be a tad understated in its approach, but it’s a smart comparison to the way community can silence the conscience, and how abuse can lay rampant in secret.
"A key strength of “Small Things Like These” lies in Walsh and Mielants’ intelligent translation of Keegan’s bare bones style to the screen."
— Rachel Pronger
"[Murphy's] is a marvel of a performance, extremely expressive and yet deeply inward-looking."
— Sheila O'Malley
In 1985, while working as a coal merchant to support his family, Bill Furlong discovers disturbing secrets kept by the local convent and uncovers truths of his own; forcing him to confront his past and the complicit silence of a small Irish town controlled by the Catholic Church.
New Ross, Ireland, 1985. Over Christmas, coal merchant Bill Furlong hears screams by the convent in his town, leading him to discover startling secrets about the supposedly charitable asylums and his own past.
Cillian Murphy’s performance makes this film.
What a film to watch over Christmas. It doesn’t fit the usual joyful mood, but it does fit more closely to the holiday’s true ethos.
Berlin
1 win
