This New Poignant Drama With 93% on RT Is One of Cillian Murphy's Best Works
The actor has teamed up with a director he met on the set of Peaky Blinders.
Recently, Prime Video released Tim Mielants' quiet Irish drama Small Things Like These, which has a 93% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The film stars Oscar winner Cillian Murphy, who also produced the film.
What Is Small Things Like These About?
1985, the small Irish town of New Ross. Christmas is approaching, but Bill, a shopkeeper and coal delivery man, does not feel the approaching holiday – he comes home to his wife and five daughters late at night.
One early morning, when the streets are deserted, Bill arrives at the local convent on another delivery and sees a frozen and exhausted girl, Sarah, lying on a pile of coal.
The nuns are not at all surprised and drag Sarah into the main building. Bill loses his peace: he now spends long evenings sitting by the window and trying to understand what is happening within the walls of the convent.
Tim Mielants And Cillian Murphy Met on Peaky Blinders
Belgian director Tim Mielants and Irish actor Cillian Murphy met on the set of the TV series Peaky Blinders. Since then, the two have dreamed of working together again.
When Mielants visited Murphy in Dublin, the actor's wife, Yvonne McGuinness, suggested the idea of adapting Claire Keegan's novel Small Things Like These for the big screen.
Murphy set up Big Things Films specifically to make the film. After winning the Oscar, the actor wants to film more in his native Ireland and support independent cinema.
The Movie Reveals the Magdalene Asylums Problem
In Small Things Like These the central place is given to an ordinary man – Bill. Unexpectedly, he becomes a witness to horrific events that are impossible to ignore, although many try.
Sarah, whom the man meets by chance, is one of the many victims of the Magdalene asylums. Correctional institutions for "fallen women" were supported by the Catholic Church. Usually, girls who became pregnant out of wedlock ended up in these asylums.
Asylums were widespread throughout Europe, but they became especially popular in Ireland. The last institution in the country did not close until 1996, although rumors of inhumane conditions for girls in asylums had been circulating for decades.
Small Things Like These Is One of Cillian Murphy's Best Roles
Small Things Like These is a melancholic and measured movie. Bill's thoughts are mostly at home, where he spends a long time trying to wash his hands of coal over the sink. Will he be able to clean his hands if he does not try to rescue Sarah from the convent?
We spend most of the screen time looking at close-ups of Cillian Murphy, convinced that we have a great actor in front of us, able to hold the viewer's attention for tens of seconds only with his big, sad blue eyes.