Today’s film is a classic case of squeezing 15 minutes worth of movie into 98 minutes of runtime. I won’t say this film was dull, but -boy- was I waiting for nuns to make an offensive … or a counter-offensive … or the IRA to step in … or the Lucky Charms leprechaun … or literally anything else that didn’t happen in this film.
The year is 1985, the town is New Ross, Ireland, and while young girls are being abused by the Magdalene sisters, this direction chose instead to focus entirely upon a stoic, self-doubting, and -quite frankly- boring Irish man, Bill Furlong (Cillian Murphy). Bill sells coal for a living. He’s the father of n girls (where n>4). Every day, he gets up too early and hauls bags of coal to people who give him money for said bags of coal.
His life is dull.
His childhood wasn’t necessarily dull, so the film cuts often to the tragic adventures of young Bill (Louis Kirwan). These adventures give us the valuable insight that he once asked for a jigsaw puzzle for Christmas and instead received a portable
rubber hot water bottle. This has to rank on your top 10 disappointments of all time, huh? I think I’d rather have received nothing. Literally, nothing.
However, such moments toughened up Bill for a lifetime of bleak disappointment including coming home tired and falling asleep in front of the TV. Moments like these seem to comprise at least an hour of screen time. Eventually, something has to happen, right? That something is Bill’s visit to a local convent, where the nuns are every bit as scary as I remember from Catholic school. And they have a mafia-like grip on the young girls there.
(I’m inventing images here; the film really was both subtle and dull.)
I won’t describe any more. Suffice to say Small Things Like These is a well-meaning, but ultimately a redundant and lesser scolding of the Magdalene authorities. We’ve seen this before in The Magdelene Sisters and it seems near criminal to focus on the coal guy instead of one of the girls abused by the nuns. I found this picture a decent historical recreation, but ultimately dull and, well, small.
There once was a man named Bill
Who hauled Irish coal up the hill
He encountered some nuns
Acting like well-dressed Huns
Should he act on this or just sit still?
Rated PG-13, 98 Minutes
Director: Tim Mielants
Writer: Edna Walsh, Emily Watson
Genre: So much time … so little plot
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Anyone abused by Magdalene nuns
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Magdalene nuns
