I think it can be interesting to see where an actor takes their career after winning an Oscar. Sure, the thing to do for many, especially if they aren’t all that well-known, is to take that as an opportunity to do some big budget Hollywood fare. But then you may have someone like Olivia Colman who has always been working steadily but isn’t exactly a huge star where they essentially continue turning in quality performances in all manner of projects. Cillian Murphy strikes me as one of those sorts of actors that has always worked steadily but was never a huge star, and he’s probably fine with that.
I think Small Things Like These suggests he’s going to keep doing that sort of thing, and that’s a good thing for him and for audiences.
It’s around Christmas in 1985 in the Irish village of New Ross where coal merchant Bill Furlong (Murphy) is a troubled man. His business is going OK from the looks of things, his employees like him, and he’s happily married to wife Eileen (Eileen Walsh) with five daughters at home. However, there’s a convent nearby that is one of the Magdalene Laundry houses, homes run by nuns where unwed pregnant girls, many dropped off by their parents by the looks of things, are given a place to work and learn a trade until they give birth, after which the babies are given away for adoption. These houses have been around for ages, but there’s something going on that Bill is very concerned about.
That has a lot to do with Bill’s own history: his own mother was an unwed teenager, but she was taken in by a well-off widow, Mrs. Wilson (Michelle Fairley) who gave young Bill and his mother a comfortable home, even seeing to Bill’s education as seen in flashbacks strewn throughout the movie. This factor means Bill is hyperaware of potentially abused youngsters. But to do anything that might go against the nuns, particularly the manipulative Mother Superior Sister Mary (Emily Watson), could endanger Bill’s business, to say nothing of the fact the nuns run the local school, and he might not be able to get his younger girls an education if he says something. However, saying something is not Bill’s way. He’s a quiet man of few words. What can a man like that do to?
As I said above, Murphy’s Bill is a quiet man, one who expresses his thoughts more from quiet looks and a downtrodden head and body language. The film shows Bill’s troubled conscience more through subtle cuts between the past and the present, plus how vigorously he washes his coal-stained hands when he gets home from work. But somehow, even though he doesn’t really say anything, even when asked directly by his wife, people seem to know what’s happening. It’s not so much that what the nuns are doing is a secret; it’s more that Bill is the sort of character who might do something about it, and Murphy does a fine job of showing Bill’s troubles up until the end of the movie.
Likewise, I honestly felt a bit surprised that the movie actually ended where and when it did. In any number of movies, it may have gone on from this particular moment, but as soon as I realized what was happening, I also realized that it was the right place to end the movie. Bill isn’t going to solve the problem of the convent and the Magdalene Houses. He’s a stand-in for any number of Irish people who knew or suspected something was wrong and finally does something about it. But Bill isn’t doing this to bring down the nuns. Instead, he’s doing it for his own peace of mind, and I think that makes the story more personal, more appropriate, and well worth my time.
Grade: A
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