Small Things Like These
Directed by Tim Mielants
There are quiet films that whisper, and then there are quiet films that haunt you like a hymn sung in an abandoned church. Small Things Like These, based on the Claire Keegan novella and starring Cillian Murphy, is the latter. It’s a film that burns slowly but leaves a deep, unshakeable ash in the soul.
Set in a grim Irish town during the Christmas of 1985, the story orbits Bill Furlong (Murphy), a coal merchant whose life trudges along with the somber rhythm of working-class duty. Bill is a man of decency, but also of denial—a character painfully aware of the rot beneath the surface but too bound by habit, shame, and social complicity to name it. Until, of course, he can’t ignore it any longer.
The film unearths the horror of the Magdalene Laundries—not with sensationalism, but with stark restraint. When Bill discovers a traumatized young girl imprisoned and abused by nuns at a local convent, the Catholic stranglehold over Ireland’s morality play comes into full focus. It’s a narrative many in Ireland still carry in their bones. Mielants doesn't embellish this horror—he presents it with a reverent terror, the kind that doesn’t need orchestral crescendos to devastate. A rosary clinking on tile. A girl’s silence. A town’s cowardice.
Cillian Murphy, who also produced the film, delivers a performance so internal it’s almost monastic. His eyes carry the whole weather of the film—guilt, fatigue, a yearning for moral clarity in a country where the Church turned cruelty into a sanctified routine. Watching Murphy unravel is like watching a dam begin to leak. And when it finally breaks, there’s no catharsis—just the realization that goodness often comes at the cost of belonging.
This isn’t just a film about Ireland’s past—it’s a quiet scream against systems that normalize cruelty and demand silence. If you’ve ever wondered how good people allow bad things to happen, Small Things Like These is your answer. It’s in the small hesitations, the polite deference, the fear of rocking the boat. And it’s in the power of one man, no matter how ordinary, to say: No more.
Tim Mielants handles the material with the kind of grace you pray for in films tackling institutional violence. There are no male saviors here—just an exhausted man forced to reconcile the sacred myths of his upbringing with the monstrous truths behind them. The cinematography, all gray fog and muted palettes, matches the film’s moral weight. Every frame feels like a confession.
What’s most revolutionary about Small Things Like These is that it doesn’t shout. In a cinematic culture addicted to spectacle, here is a film that dares to whisper. And that whisper, laced with shame and stubborn compassion, might just be louder than any scream.
VERDICT:
A bleak, beautiful reckoning with faith, complicity, and conscience. Cillian Murphy gives the performance of a career. Don’t watch it to feel good—watch it to feel awake.
4.5 out of 5 Molotovs
