For Belgium-born-director Tim Mielants, who’s just adapted Claire Keegan’s Orwell Prize-winning novel “Small Things Like These” for the big screen, grief is just as blinding as the Christmas lights of the film’s bygone Irish town. “I can structure grief because of the personal trauma of losing my brother when I was really young,” tells Beyond The Pines. “And, actually, most of my work goes around grief. And I felt that was kind of the center, the engine of this story.”
The film, which stars Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer), unpacked Ireland’s controversial history with Magdalene Laundries (i.e., the now-extinct Roman Catholic institutions that ostensibly housed “fallen women”). Set in a small County Wexford town, “Small Things” follows the quiet coal merchant Bill Furlong’s (Murphy) journey through unresolved childhood grief, all the while caring for a wife and five daughters during the holiday season. During an early-morning coal delivery to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery that offers him an obscure opportunity for past closure, but forces him to confront the complicit silence of a town controlled by the Catholic Church.
“[Cillian and I] met each other on [the] set of Peaky Blinders season three. After that, we were kind of following each other's work,” Mielants said. “He saw my features and was really a fan of the kind of rhythm and pacing I have in my movies.”
“During the pandemic, we were shooting nearby; I was shooting in Liverpool during The Responder, and we went for a long pandemic walk outside and shared the desire in doing something together.” Mielants continued. “Then, when I went to Dublin, we went for another long walk, and he actually came up with the book by Claire Keegan.”
At the press conference for the film, which kicked off Berlinale 2024, Murphy, who also co-produced the film, described working with all past familiar colleagues as a “serendipitous moment” while referring to the dark Irish history with Magdalene Laundries as “collective trauma.”
“It was a collective trauma, particularly for people of a certain age, and I think that we’re still processing that,” Cillan said about the Golden Berlin Bear-nominated film. “[...] I think the sort of irony of the book is [that] it’s a Christian man trying to do a Christian act in a dysfunctional Christian society.”
The film’s first moments practically envelope viewers in the 20th-century small town’s misty cobblestone roads and rolling hills, using the brain-tickling ASMR of tire-scratching gravel, coal shoveling, and the low hum-drum of business. Without many words, Bill is portrayed as a hardworking man by his ash-stained hands alone, which earns him a luxurious one-minute cleaning tutorial in the narrow half-bathroom of his stone townhouse.
“I think the smartest thing I did is not try to pretend that I know anything about Ireland,” Mielants confessed, “I was just very honest and open [with my film crew] like, ‘Teach me, help me out here.’ They definitely helped me with [Ireland’s] cultural touches.”
“I researched more on the psychological level, the stages of grief, how grief works and where the emotional arcs are. I was kind of extremely going in-depth into that kind of emotional experience, which I experienced myself,” Mielants continued. “I think there’s so many researchers around me who can do a better job.”
Though “Small Things” is no action-packed movie, Bill’s office-scene showdown with the oppressive Sister Mary, portrayed by Emily Watson, epitomizes the film’s brilliant melodramatic pacing, drenched in mind-numbing staring contests, fireplace crackle, and under-the-table money that never sees the light of day– all leaving viewers with bated breath. Even that dims in the face of Bill’s growing childhood turmoil, which sees a bigger character arc than any of Spider-Man’s inescapable trilogy remakes, complete with tear-jerking flashbacks and palatable friction with his wife, played by Eileen Walsh, and other townsfolk.
Actually, Walsh is, perhaps, the standout supporting act of the film and another necessary catalyst for good ol’ Bill’s metamorphosis. Eileen Furlong is a conspicuous woman; every nag and every name-drop reinforces her social status. Bill’s gradual bad attitude would feel like a regular seasonal depression if the inhumane living conditions of their town’s Magdalene Laundry weren’t looming in the background. Instead, Bill and Eileen’s whispered fights tango beautifully between personal autonomy and the perpetual repressive rhetoric that keeps the town from change.
“If you put two old friends next to each other or people who know each other really well, you get so much [emotion that] comes for free if you put these. There’s a kind [of] subtext and chemistry between the two,” Mientlas said of Murphy and Walsh’s performance. “We had a kind of triangle between the three of us: They are very good friends, and I’m good friends with Cillian. So because everyone knows each other so well, we were able to share our personal experiences and emotional connections between people, which played out on a deeper level [on film].”
Even if “Small Things’” is only a glimpse into a dysfunctional and repressed society, Mielants’ subtle soundtrack splinters Bill’s everyday life until his suppressed guilt propels him to act in good conscience, appeasing his past regret even if it’s against the town’s status quo. “The film itself feels so acoustic. From the moment we [first] put acoustic instruments in there, like violins or piano, it felt the same, felt predictable. We [had] been working with music composers and felt like, ‘No, it’s just the music is describing what we already see.’”
Oftentimes ambient, other times a bluesy waltz, Mielants isn’t afraid to throw in sonic spices in places where dialogue cannot reach, serving nostalgia with a side of grief and an aftertaste for actionable change, which Bill perseus in the film’s final minutes. “We added the Flamenco, Arab, Western [musical] influences, which, [when] mixed together, instilled this element of tension. However, we didn’t want [the music] to manipulate the viewer’s experience too much, but we wanted them to feel invited to feel something.”
Long after the Furlong family television cuts out at the film’s end, Mielants wants people to talk about this piece of Irish history, saying he hopes it will “open a can of worms in a good way.” Though viewers are left wanting the family’s reaction to Bill’s unexpected development, it’s not as important as the film’s end notes, denouncing Ireland’s demoralizing Magdalene Laundries, which were ultimately defunct by 1996. “Small Things” is a drama that keeps on giving, as echoed by familiar critics. Powered by tip-top performances from Murphy, Walsh and Watson, Mielants not only crafts a historical political drama that, yes, relives a shameful period in Ireland, but he does so successfully by provoking a larger conversation around the public’s complicity in the Catholic Church’s wrongdoings. “Small Things” is what it looks like when a filmmaker takes a shot at reawakening real cinema and even more important questions.
