Cillian Murphy Is Absorbing In Magdalene Laundries Drama Small Things Like These

In his first credit as a producer, Cillian Murphy, alongside director Tim Mielants, offers a profound story inspired by very recent history. Based on the novel by Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These follows Bill Furlong (Cillian Murphy), a coal merchant who stumbles upon the abuse occurring at a local Magdalene laundry, an institution that supposedly offered rehabilitation to “fallen women” (largely sex workers and unwed mothers), but in reality operated more like a workhouse.

The film opens with Bill watching as a young woman is dragged into the local convent, her mother ignoring her apologies and pleas to take her home. Though visibly disturbed, Bill walks away and returns home to his daughters, clearly haunted by what he has seen. This opening sequence establishes the film’s focus on the role that willful ignorance played in the continuation of abuse at these institutions. Young women, abandoned by their family and exiled by society for being “sexually promiscuous,” were forced to work at these laundries under excruciating conditions for little to no pay, and often endured abuse at the hands of the nuns who ran the laundries. In the film’s setting of New Ross, an intricate web of power is woven to ensure that the church is able to get away with these crimes by having a hand in almost every aspect of town life.

Lurking beneath the veneer of respectability is a sinister Omelas-style deal; there is an unspoken rule shared between the townsfolk to never speak of any wrongdoing that one may witness at the laundries. In exchange, the convent, led by the severe Sister Mary (Emily Watson), will continue to hand out favors to the townspeople, like Christmas bonuses for local workers and allowing the children admittance into the local school. For many, the desire for stability far outweighs any moral responsibility toward the girls at the laundries. Bill, however, is the only one willing to shirk his reputation in the name of saving at least one girl.

Though a man of few words, Bill is watchful and keenly aware of the horrors of the laundries and the constant danger that the women in this community face. At night, he watches solemnly as a woman is physically accosted by a drunken man in the street, and looks back in worry at a group of teenage girls who are being harassed by some rowdy boys. He asks his eldest daughter if any of the men on the coal farm give her any trouble, repeating the question until he is certain that she’s being honest about her safety. As the father of five daughters, Bill’s biggest fear is that they will one day end up at a Magdalene institution. We learn that this fear is based on childhood trauma, as Bill himself was born out of wedlock, his mother only escaping her fate when she was taken in by a wealthy woman who had the means to go against the church. His awareness of his mother’s situation is what lends him such empathy, and is eventually what leads him to bonding with Sarah (Zara Devlin), a young girl being held at the laundry.

When Bill first finds Sarah locked in a coal shed, he takes her back to the convent under the assumption that it must have been a mistake. The following scene plays out like something in a horror film. The score rises to a crescendo and the camera lingers on Watson’s face as she feigns sympathy for the girl, the roaring embers from the fireplace reflecting in her eyes. Watson, though small in stature, appears ferocious as the corrupt Mother superior. Her presence on screen is immediately off-putting, her gaze powerful enough to make a grown man like Bill cower in her presence. Sarah too crumbles under Sister Mary’s stern glare, unable to compose herself. “It’s just a big nothing,” she admits under duress, reciting the made up story of how she was left outside by the other girls. When the camera holds on Sarah’s beaten and crying face as she takes cover for her abusers in fear of harsher punishment, it feels as though Mielant is forcing his audience to sit with the gravity of the situation, denying us any respite or the chance to look away.

As Bill spends more time at the laundry, he finds himself overwhelmed with the repressed memories of his mother and his childhood, which are powerful enough to bring him to his knees. Cillian Murphy delivers his performance in typical Murphy style. He is reserved yet affecting and offers a masterclass in the art of translating emotion through physicality. Standing in front of Sister Mary’s desk, clutching his belongings to his chest, Bill appears like a small child waiting for punishment from his headmaster. Murphy embodies the trauma that Bill carried his whole life and translates it through stature and movement, letting his body speak where his words do not. He never raises his voice—he almost seems as though he’s terrified of disrupting the environment around him—but when he does speak, his words are firm and resolute.

When Sister Mary makes a cutting remark about how Bill has no sons to carry on his name, he retorts, “I’m me mother’s name. No harm ever came from that.” Murphy’s performance stands in stark contrast to his award-winning turn in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, where he was expected to deliver pages and pages of dialogue about nuclear physics with ease. In Small Things Like These, Mielants’ film instead relies on the quiet grace of Murphy’s performance, and although this film may not immediately stand out among his more well-known film appearances, it is one of the most absorbing performances Murphy has given to date.

In Small Things Like These, melancholy seeps through every frame. Unlike other dramas of a similar vein, Mielants’ film doesn’t have a neat ending where justice is served in the name of all the young women who were harmed. Instead, the film lingers at a time when the abuses were still ongoing, forcing us to reckon with the reality of such a recent horror. It has been less than 30 years since the last Magdalene institution was closed in Ireland, and in the film’s final moments, Mielants dedicates his film to the more than 56,000 young women who were admitted to these institutions in the 20th century and “the children who were taken from them.” Through this adaptation, Mielants mourns the lives lost to these institutions while simultaneously providing a timely reminder of the danger of passive complicity.

Director: Tim Mielants
Writer: Enda Walsh
Stars: Cillian Murphy, Eileen Walsh, Michelle Fairley, Clare Dunne, Helen Behan, Emily Watson
Release date: Nov. 8, 2024 (United States)

Nadira Begum is a freelance film critic and culture writer based in the UK. To see her talk endlessly about film, TV, and her love of vampires, you can follow her on Twitter (@nadirawrites) or Instagram (@iamnadirabegum).