Small Things Like These
Cillian Murphy gives a strong performance in slightly thin story of Magdalene laundries and their aftermath.
Small Things Like These (2024). Grade: C+
If the only thing you know Cillian Murphy from is the rather tedious blockbuster Oppenheimer, you’ve missed out — he’s an excellent actor, and unfortunately that wasn’t an excellent role (because Christopher Nolan is a shallow writer — the TV movie Day One, with David Strathairn as Oppenheimer and Brian Dennehy as General Groves, was more interesting).
Murphy’s in the best film I can possibly imagine ever being made about the Irish Civil War of the early 20th century, Ken Loach’s The Wind That Shakes the Barley, a movie so powerful I won’t need to see it again for years. (It’s the rare war movie which doesn’t glamorize war in any way.) He was as good as you could be in Danny Boyle’s OK Sunshine and poorly-directed 28 Days Later, and is well-known for Peaky Blinders, a long show about English gangsters that I haven’t been able to make my way into; I’ve tried once or twice.
One of the directors on Peaky Blinders, Tim Mielants, directed this movie, and he shows taste and good sense; the film never calls attention to itself as it deals with a difficult issue. And Murphy is excellent in this. The problem might be that the material isn’t quite enough for a movie, although it’s by no means bad.
The difficult issue here is the legacy of the Magdalene laundries in Ireland, and it’s a subject I’ve seen other movies about, before. There was 2013’s Philomena, with Judy Dench as a woman who was forced into living at one of the laundries and giving up her son for adoption when she was a teenager.
That’s what the “laundries” were — places for teenage girls who had unwed/unplanned pregnancies to be hidden away from society while they gave birth, had the children taken away, and were essentially workhouse slaves for several years to “pay back” the “charities.” Some of these places were less horrific than others, yet they all shared a attitude of cruel shaming and forced labor as a way of reconditioning the “fallen” girls (and saving their parents from the “disgrace” of having a “bad” kid, which is why parents sent their kids to these awful things; sometimes, parents sent girls to one just because the teenager was sexually active, there didn’t even need to be a pregnancy involved).
Philomena was maybe a bit too formulaic in places, yet Dench’s incredible performance gave it weight; she played a tough cookie (how could Dench be anything else?) who was still processing the pain of what happened to her. Who would always have that pain, but who finds at least some small comfort as the story progresses. It’s a strong film, and it’s based on the real stories of real people.
Peter Mullan, a Scottish actor who usually plays heavies, wrote and directed 2002’s The Magdalene Sisters, about three girls sent to one of the laundries; it’s fictional, yet it’s also based on stories that women told in a BBC documentary about the subject. Again, it’s about the people who suffered the worst abuse, and it’s also a strong film (it’s a very angry one though, without much relief for the audience — Philomena at least gives us some characters we can cheer for).
This movie isn’t about the teenagers who suffer in the laundries, not exactly; it’s about one man, Murphy, who discovers how nasty they are. Murphy’s a coal delivery man who owns the small business and does most of the deliveries himself. On his trips delivering coal to one of the laundries, he sees teenagers in misery; he’s visibly shaken by the experience.
Because, when his mom was a teenager, she had him, and her family shunned her. Yet rather than being forced into one of the laundries, his mom was able to find work with a basically sympathetic local rich lady. She died when Murphy was very young (the movie doesn’t explain what from), but he’s still grateful to have had some time with her, and grateful she wasn’t forced into the awful laundries like these girls he sees on his deliveries. About whom he can do nothing; his family and friends all tell him to forget about it, bad things happen sometimes, we’ve all just gotta accept it. It eats Murphy up inside.
Mrs. twinsbrewer pointed out that this is one of the best depictions of depression she’s ever seen in a film; I agree, it’s hard to think of a more accurate one. Murphy’s character is married, with five girls of his own, and the family seems reasonably happy and fairly secure, although they’re not anywhere above lower-middle class. His job’s tedious, but at least he owns it; that should take some of the sting out of the hard labor and the boredom.
It’s not explained why Murphy feels so down — maybe he simply thinks his life is in a rut? In any case, it doesn’t need to be explained. What’s good here is the way its shown. Murphy, at times, reaches out to others, to try to make a connection, and it never works. Meanwhile, when anyone asks about his well-being, all he can do is mutter “we’re all grand.” Nobody who’s asking wants to hear “I’M COMPLETELY SAD EVERY DAMN MOMENT OF EVERY DAMN DAY, IS THAT WHATCHA WANNA KNOW?”
This is based on a book by the acclaimed Irish writer Claire Keegan; I haven’t read any of her writing. I have seen another movie based on her work, which was the 2022 film The Quiet Girl, about a small girl whose parents were rather unloving, and the nicer adults she wishes she could live with (but can’t). It was certainly well-made, but I kept feeling like the plot, with its various revelations (all of which were very guessable in advance, and most of which were annoying), wasn’t really a believable or effective one. It was hitting certain narrative beats to make us think this was Deep Stuff, not because the filmmakers emphasized strongly with the anguish of the child.
I kinda get the same sense here, and I’m wondering — is that from the author of the book? I’m sure Keegan feels outrage about the laundries, but I’m not sure she understands this material enough to give us a plausible story here. Why is Murphy, just now, becoming upset at the laundries’ treatment of girls? He’s been delivering coal to one for years, hasn’t he? Everybody in town knows the rumors of how awful they are, why didn’t he? Was he blocking it out because of the pain of his mom’s death?
At one point Murphy meets the Mother Superior of the laundry in question, and it’s a welcome sharp, imposing performance by Emily Watson; it’s always a joy to see her around. She starts threatening Murphy in really gangster-style ways. She notes that he’s got three girls in the Catholic school next door, run by the same sisters. Be a shame if the girls had to leave, or his youngest weren’t allowed to attend.
Now, hang on a second! First off, weren’t the laundries pretty secretive? Isn’t that how they got away with unmarked graves and such? Would they be right next to the flippin’ high school? Second, aren’t there any other schools in town? Like, perfectly decent public schools? Is this school such hot s**t that it’s the only way his girls can hope to get accepted to college, is if they go to the fancy Catholic school? Is that how things really worked in midsized-town Ireland in the 1980s?
Then Emily Watson decides to slip Murphy a bribe, and I kinda decided “either there’s a whole side to how the laundries operated for years which no other movie has shown us, or this plot is silly.” What is she bribing him for? Since everybody knows the laundries are rotten, it’s not like he can report this one and the authorities will do anything. I get the sense that the author and the screenwriter (Irish playwright Enda Walsh) are making this up out of American crime/gangster movies.
(Now, this may be unfair to Keegan; here’s an interview where she talks about how rotten the Irish economy was in the mid-1980s, and how lousy her rural high school was. That’s not made explicit in the film, and it explains why Murphy would be desperate to have his kids at a better private high school. Moviemakers, as a general rule, don’t give too much of a s**t about explaining how economic precarity affects people, because most filmmakers are pretty well off, and most come from privileged backgrounds. Keegan is presumably well-off today, but her background was on a small farm in a rural community. It’s possible her books are more grounded than the films based upon them.)
Although the scene with Watson is effective (two good actors head to head), the other scenes where Murphy’s stressing out over what he sees in the laundries aren’t directed as well as the rest of the movie; the camera jiggles all about to make us feel “this is scary.” Director Mielants, we already knew they were scary! And we’re already seeing how scared Murphy is! (There’s a scene later on in the film where he’s rocking back and forth while driving his truck, and it feels way too much like a Method Acting moment — it doesn’t have the strength of Murphy’s earlier, internalized sorrow.)
Also, while Mielants is a bright, talented guy (he also directed some of the final episodes of the excellent first season of The Terror), is a Belgian director the right fit for this material? The Terror was partially about colonialist arrogance, Belgians know that’s part of their own history, too. But the power and influence of Catholic institutions in Ireland? Don’t you need to be a little closer than Belgium to get that? That’s kind of like if a Belgian director did Spotlight.
And I was bugged by how the script makes Murphy’s wife basically the equivalent of the timid wife of the noble sheriff in a Western. Don’t mess with those dirty outlaws who run and corrupt the town, they’ll only make trouble for ya. It’s a thankless and humorless role in the Westerns, and it is here, although Eileen Walsh does her best to keep the character seeming smart, if not interesting. (Walsh was one of the abused girls in The Magdalene Sisters; again, a better part in a better movie than this one.)
Nothing about this movie is shameful, although the score by Senjan Jansen could stand to be a little less generically moody and the cinematography by Frank van den Eeden a little less generically dark. It’s just that — aside from Murphys’s compelling portrayal of depression — I’ve seen everything in this before. Either in other movies about the laundries, or in Westerns or gangster pictures or what have you. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian (a good writer if not an especially helpful critic) said that the ending surprised him so much, he “wasn’t aware that it was going to be the ending until the screen faded to black.” Good God, man. I knew exactly when this was fading to black and I knew exactly what the ending would be the second all those townies and Murphys’s wife warned him not to get involved. The ending’s not terrible, but it’s certainly no surprise (maybe Bradshaw has just forgotten every similar movie he’s ever seen).
Actually, a good movie would have gotten to this ending after 30 minutes, and then spent the rest of the story telling us what happened next. But it looks like the filmmakers were staying true to Keegan’s intentions. In this interview with Elanor Wachtel, Keegan says that what happens after the book’s end is probably gonna be disastrous; that the main character’s decision leads to ruin for everyone involved. “He’s hugely heroic. But heroes in literature, heroes in life, they die. They don’t come to good ends. They don’t save anyone really. They suffer. And certainly people who were brave and went up against the Catholic Church in this country suffered horribly. So I see it as the story of someone who has stuck a knife in his own life, everything he’s worked for. But that’s just my interpretation. Just because I wrote it doesn’t mean I know what it’s about, and I mean that most sincerely.”
However true to the book the filmmakers are trying to be, it doesn’t change the fact that this ending is unsatisfying for the movie. I think they could have taken it farther, and shown the disastrous consequences if they wanted — or shown us a positive (if not easy) outcome. I don’t think either would betray the original material.
So you can see this for Murphy’s perofrmance (and, briefly, Watson’s) and not be disappointed — and it’s a lot easier to take than The Wind That Shakes the Barley, that movie is so sad! But if you want a story about the Magdalene laundries, this isn’t it. See Philomena if you want hope, or The Magdalene Sisters if you want outrage, or seek out Sex in a Cold Climate (the BBC documentary on the subject; I haven’t seen it, but the BBC used to be good before it started sucking up to American thugs). Or hey, find a book about ‘em! Quaint notion, but it is something people used to do.
Maybe it’s something these filmmakers should have tried themselves. Keegan’s said she doesn’t like doing research, and that’s a perfectly acceptable approach for a certain type of writer to take — if your stories are more about the interior state of your characters, too much research can bog the author down. Expressing the emotions effectively is enough. But in a movie based in a particular time and place, we need explanations. We don’t get enough here, and it’s frustrating. Although Murphy’s performance isn’t; he’s doing something close to what a good writer can do, and movies usually can’t. To take us inside the head of someone suffering from depression without having it be put into dialogue. It’s a considerable accomplishment; the guy’s a helluva actor.