«Small Things Like These» is a film with an unremarkable poster and trailer, which my wife and I went to see mostly to watch Cillian Murphy after his role in «Oppenheimer». However, upon closer acquaintance with the film, it turned out that it was based on real events, which meant that after watching it, I wanted to make a review of it.
This film deals with events related to church institutions in Ireland, which were designed to shelter and at the same time re-educate and set on the right path «immoral» and «undesirable» girls. These included unmarried mothers, orphans, victims of violence, and many other women who, against their will, effectively found themselves locked up in religious institutions. Moreover, this went on for a long time, and the last such institution closed quite recently by historical standards — in 1996. Once in closed religious institutions, the girls worked for free, were subjected to humiliation, and were effectively deprived of their freedom. Many families and locals knew what was going on, but chose to remain silent. It is this collective silence that becomes one of the main themes of the film.
The main character of the film is coal merchant Bill Furlong, an ordinary family man who works, takes care of his wife and children, and lives the most ordinary life. By the way, unlike the story itself, which, as I already mentioned, is completely true, the character and image of Bill are rather fictional. While working, he delivers coal to all sorts of places and becomes a witness to all sorts of events. During one such delivery to a local convent, he encounters something that makes him question the usual order of things. He faces a difficult choice: pretend that nothing happened, as those around him do, or risk his own well-being and reputation for the sake of a complete stranger.
Human conscience and moral choice are the main themes of this film. What do you do when you are being manipulated, blackmailed, and bribed, and the whole society around you turns a blind eye to it, considering what is happening to be the norm? After watching, you ask yourself a difficult question: what would I myself have done in such a situation?
Besides that, the film makes you look at religious institutions differently: is religion truly capable of re-educating or at least simply educating a person? And where is a person better off — in freedom or in such institutions? Can punishments imposed by monasteries ever be fair, or should this be handled exclusively by the state?
If we talk about the film itself, and not about the story, then it is dominated by greyness and gloom. The main character's life resembles Groundhog Day, in which nothing new happens, and each of his days is hard and dirty work. The film is slow in places, although this can hardly be considered a drawback. In this film, Cillian Murphy has very few lines. The main feature of his role is the emotions that literally tear the hero apart from the inside because of the internal choice he faces.
