Claire Keegan’s transcendent novelette feels like one of those books that’d pose serious challenges for adaptation. While its stripped-down minimalism may offer plenty of externalized metaphors, it never lingers too long on internal monologues or even passing thoughts. It’s because the rich interiority of the main character is more suggested than outright that a filmmaker could have trouble conveying these deep emotions onscreen. Luckily, director Tim Mielants had Cillian Murphy. Following an everyman coal merchant who uncovers a ring of human trafficking and abuse in his small Irish town, it’s a movie that, like the book, asks audiences to consider not just past injustices they’ve let slide, but how those small complicities ultimately aid something uglier than we can possibly imagine. Earlier this year, Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds of Kindness presented compassion and helpfulness as a kind of absurd, self-destructive tendency among humans. This film forms an interesting counterpoint to that, showing how small acts of kindness aren’t just necessary for the survival of the human race, but are perhaps the only way big changes can be made, the only way we can fight for a better world.
Positioning Bill Furlong as an everyman is therefore so important to our understanding of the film’s emotional core. Maybe that’s why he’s so often shot from behind, allowing us to project ourselves and our emotions onto him. Like all of us, he gets up, goes to work and comes home, comfortably ensconced in the routines of his daily life. No one can really blame him for being unaware of societal issues. His work is hard, hauling heavy bags of coal from site to site, providing his community with heat and power for the harsh winter months. Mielants’ willingness to let us sink into in these moments is crucial because it establishes a very slow pace, not just getting us close to Furlong’s character, but also introducing us to his world. This sense comfort via routine is shattered when Bill sees a young woman, crying and screaming for help, being dragged into one of the many church-ran laundries in town. These workhouse-like institutions for ‘fallen women’ were common at the time, and were only shut down in the early 1990s.
It’s here that the camera’s shallow depth of field begins to take on an almost ominous presence, making us wonder about all the things that are just barely out of focus, on the edge of the frame. This sensation reflects Bill’s slow realization that life in his small town is not what it seems. Like the camera, he begins to see things he’d previously been able to block out: the way young girls are pursued so aggressively in the street, the way a woman is never really safe as she walks home alone at night. It doesn’t just make him think of the daughters he has at home, but also reminds him of his mother. Single and without a husband, she was spared from being sent to a laundry thanks to a rich woman taking them both in. He remembers how the small acts of kindness from Mrs. Wilson and her farmhand, Ned, meant so much to him in his darkest moments: being teased for not having a father, or even after his mother’s death. The narrative is a bit reliant on these flashbacks, and at times they’re introduced a bit confusingly, but such moments do so much to flesh out Bill’s backstory. With this context, the harsh yellow streetlights begin to create a tone almost out of a horror film. It emphasizes the isolation and desperation hiding just beneath this small town’s happy exterior. Like the prose of the novelette itself, there are no fancy camera movements or particularly expressive lighting. Making great use of a tripod, a few dolly shots and mostly-practical lighting, the bare-bones aesthetic of this film still manages to enrapture audiences, making us wonder what’s really at the heart of this supposedly-idyllic town; and the sound design might just offer an answer.
The membrane separating the monstrous from the mundane is a thin one that is frequently punctured by sound. When Bill is in the laundry to deliver an invoice, we hear babies crying, later learning they’ll be sent to the highest bidder. Distant voices whisper conspiracies that are just muffled enough to be out of earshot, but present enough in the mix to let us know something’s afoot. After Bill discovers a young girl who’s been thrown into the coal shed and refuses the help she’s begging for, saying ‘it’s not up to me,’ he has a panic attack in his work truck. In this moment and many others, all sound dies down except for Cillian Murphy’s rapid breathing. The focus-pulling makes the rest of the world ebb away and we’re left beside Bill, processing the horrific abuse these young women endure. Even the church bells being present at both the start and end of the film says a lot about absolute power and resistance to it. It not only locks us into his character’s perspective, but also provides space for viewers to reflect on how his complicity is our own. How many times have we driven by someone who needs help but decided to mind our own business? How many desperate people do we walk past every day without so much as lifting our head? It’s this common monstrousness the film is interested in exploring, and Murphy does these lofty ideas justice through his performance.
In the hands of a lesser cast, a lot of this movie wouldn’t have landed as effectively as it did. This is because Enda Walsh’s script, much like the book, takes a more poetic approach to plot. After Bill sees a barefooted boy in the street, Murphy’s expert controls over the minute shifts in his expression lets us know he’s deeply affected. Instead of having him bring this moment up to his wife, Eileen, Walsh instead trusts us to make the association ourselves when he asks what would have happened to his mom if it weren’t for the kindness of Mrs. Wilson. ‘What would have happened to me?’ he asks, eyes wide with horror, on the verge of tears. The supporting cast is just as good. After Bill finds the young girl in the shed, and the Mother Superior invites him into her office, Emily Watson’s ability to control the nuances of her vocal inflections make it clear there are underlying threats here. When she asks Bill how excited his kids are to soon start at the convent’s school, saying ‘there are so few spots, I hope we have room for them all’ before giving him a wad of money ‘for the holidays,’ we understand all he has to lose by speaking out.
For me, this slow pacing, this subtlety in the writing and the powerhouse performances throughout are what make the ending so transcendent. Bill’s choice feels like it somehow goes beyond the limits of Keegan’s fableist novel, both saying something about society at large while also providing an extremely fulfilling character arc. It’s through the film’s ability to put us so deeply into Furlong’s head that audiences get an understanding of just how much is at stake for not just him, but all of us, showing how solidarity is something that can and should be built if we are to really fight for a better tomorrow. During times of genocide and rising fascism, this film feels wildly important. Be kind—the world depends on it! Small Things Like These is now in theaters, and will soon be on VOD!
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