Small Things Like These is a sombre, subdued drama that slowly reveals its emotional weight — a story about conscience, complicity, and the quiet resistance found in doing what’s right. Adapted from Claire Keegan’s acclaimed novella and set in 1985 Ireland, the film marks a thoughtful return to the screen for Cillian Murphy following his Oscar-winning turn in Oppenheimer. Here, he trades nuclear secrets for coal sacks, carrying not just physical burdens but the crushing moral weight of a dark chapter in Irish history.
Murphy plays Bill Furlong, a hardworking father of five who delivers coal in the small town of New Ross. His world is a modest one: long hours, a quiet family life, and the same routine through narrow, rain-drenched streets. When he makes a delivery to the local convent — a Magdalene laundry, where young women are imprisoned under the guise of morality — Bill is faced with a choice that quietly threatens to dismantle his carefully built life.
Murphy’s performance is the film’s greatest strength. With barely more than a glance or a laboured breath, he conveys a man haunted by his past and paralysed by the present. His internal struggle plays out in silence and scrubbing, in glances through doorways and across dinner tables. It’s understated work, and Murphy handles it with grace.
The film’s tone mirrors Bill’s restraint — quiet, sometimes oppressively so. Director Tim Mielants (who also directed Cillian in six episodes of Peaky Blinders) opts for minimalism: muted colours, chilly landscapes, and a soundscape where the creak of a floorboard or a child’s chatter says more than dialogue ever could. It all contributes to a haunting sense of place and time, effectively grounding us in the weight of Ireland’s Magdalene laundry scandal — even if the film’s hesitance to confront the true horrors head-on may leave some viewers wishing for a sharper impact.
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Emily Watson delivers a pointed supporting turn as the convent’s Mother Superior, radiating menace behind polite smiles. A key scene between her and Murphy provides one of the film’s few moments of dramatic heat, though her character ultimately feels underexplored. Eileen Walsh gives Bill’s wife a believable mix of support and pragmatic distance.
The film occasionally leans too hard into flashbacks to flesh out Bill’s past — some moments feel a touch heavy-handed — but the intention is clear: to present a man shaped by childhood pain and struggling with the same institutional cruelty decades later. Whether or not he acts defines the film’s moral core.
Small Things Like These is a quiet story told with care, occasionally at the expense of dramatic momentum. It doesn’t always dig as deep as it could, but it lingers — in the questions it raises, the injustices it edges into focus, and the quiet turmoil of a man wrestling with what it means to do the right thing.
