The sound of church bells ringing forms the starting and ending sequence of the story “Small Things Like These.” The bells ring while the characters of the story are getting ready for Christmas which shows the ambiance of the town as snowy and the atmosphere somewhat rustic which caters to an Irish Town full of Church Idealism as they prepare for the festive. The O’Brien’s domineering presence shown in the movie coupled with the politics associated with this Irish Laundries “shameful tradition” is subdued and the viewer is only understood at the end of the story when the second set of bells sounds ringing, almost echoing making it a powerful statement.
The laundries exploited single mothers, turned them into unwed women, or treated them as orphans, all combined with workhouses which turned into a child labor black market zone. These women were used and abused as if they were inmates in a jail, the workhouses aided them in staying under the radar while giving these women cheap. Children birthed by the mothers had a hefty price to pay and often they were willingly sold under various adoption schemes. If their mothers obtained a proper boy, society would view the male at the hearth alongside his wife, on a farm in the proper family. This monstrosity was run by the Catholic clergy and later government churches aided them through funding which allowed the system to flourish. The types of abuse that these women went through are worse than awful in almost every part.
Laundries were not removed until the middle of the 1990s, which is out of the ordinary. The painful remains stay.
‘Small Things Like These’ is about the short 2020 novel of the same name by Claire Keegan. The film is directed by Tim Mielants and Cillian Murphy Claims the role of Bill Furlong. In 2023, the award for the best international feature was received by ‘The Quiet Girl’. It is important to note that the movie is based on other short stories provided by Keegan. Enda Walsh, also an Irish playwright, played the title role in “Small Things Like These,” which is set in the town of Laois. When it premiered on April 23, it swept home the Dingle International Film Festival. I noticed only one thing taken out, and there has been a thorough description of all the visual effects so as not to add. Cohen explains that the language of Keegan’s writing is parched and controlled: she does a lot in 116 pages, and the suggested depth of the story is captured with what Walsh has transformed into for the screen. But there is little suggestion, that the character rarely articulates his feelings: how to suggest interiority?
Cillian Murphy as Bill Furlong answers this question. Simply Marvelous. It is incredibly dramatic yet at the same time, very much introspective. You never reach the bottom when the depths are disturbed. Bill is married to Eileen (Eileen Walsh), and together they have five children. When commuting around the town, he delivers heavy bags filled with coal to the community, and when he returns home he washes his hands. Although he is uncommunicative, he is observant.
He pays attention: like the cold and embarrassed child who cleans a milk bowl sitting on the steps, or a woman repelling a besotted man who is trying to kiss her. When, however, as rehearsed on a regular depositing of children, he rides up to the convent on the hill, he sees one of its flailing breasts being dragged by its mother to the door, that scene freezes him, the memory of his children being mercilessly tethered cuts him. Bill can’t un-see what he saw. His perspective of his five daughters changes entirely the moment he reaches home. They’ve got protection, but they’re vulnerable because they’re girls. He tries to, but how exactly does one open the subject of their indenture with his wife? (In a lovely dovetail, the fruitful Eileen Walsh featured in the terrifying film called “The Magdalene Sisters” in the year 2002 and showcased a performance that was not only breathtaking, but also disheartening, and which I wonder whether I’ll be able to sit through again. The echo of her shouting “You are not a man of God! You are not a man of God!” will stay in my mind until the day I die.)
A few minutes from this, Bill might for instance return to where he was earlier, but that was not after he saw in the coal shed of the convent a girl wearing nothing but coal who was also bruised and blood sleazed.
Sister Mary was icy as she offered him a weak cup of Tea. She explicitly made sure he was aware of the consequences of his actions, but all he could do was stare at her beautiful round face. Even though Sister Mary managed both the convent and the school where his daughters went, it was clear that Uncle Bill would have to pay the ultimate price for not following her instructions.
Throughout the film, Bill is portrayed as a rather careless person. Whenever he appears on screen, the camera is always placed right behind Murphy; this shows how secluded and distant he can be at times. But in reality, it is quite disheartening to see how much-unchecked power he has in this world. his expression is anything but mute. There is so much beauty, pain, and unpleasantness in his facial expressions that all come together to show how traumatized he has been.
Mielants made use of the 360-degree angles to depict several different areas like the location of the church and the city center, Bill walks around in.
Every visual has a function, and therefore, nothing can be considered a distraction. A baby cry from a distant room can be termed peculiar or the over-the-top voice-overs with people talking in the background next to 1980s cartoons can be. Nevertheless, there are quiet moments, where all that there is left to hear are Bill’s inhales, during which he is rendered mute. Only their breathing is left. There are slightly troubling interludes, which means that sounds do come in, but silence is designed.
Scenes of Bill’s childhood alternate with his memories, but they are so intricately woven into the narrative that when I turned to them for the first time, I was unaware that I was witnessing a flashback. Bill as a kid depicted beautifully by Louis Kirwan resided with his mother Sarah played by Agnes O’Casey in the large house owned by Michelle Fairley, where Sarah worked as a maid and was seen sobbing while washing bile-covered coats worn by kids who bullied her son. Bill’s dad is a mystery but there is Dory, the kindhearted Mrs Wilson, and Ned McKenna the farmworker who are Bill’s steadfast friends. To make Eileen understand why he found that scene in the convent is horrifying, he tries to rationalize it. Had Mrs. Wilson not taken the two of them in, his mother would have been placed in one of those institutions and Bill would have been shoved into an orphanage. It isn’t “none of our business” what happens up there.
All this is about us, about the girls, about the system, that we all silently support.
The prominent Irish writer John McGahern in his memoir wrote about Ukraine in the 1940s-1950s:
“By the year 1950, and in total contradiction of the spirit of the Proclamation of the Fourth of July 1916, the State had become little more than a dark theocratic entity. Almost all the control of education, hospitals, orphanages, juvenile prisons, and parish halls was in the hands of the Church. There was complete co-operation of the Church and State.”
And therefore, towards the conclusion of ‘Small Things Like These’, the church bells cease to resonate as an invitation to worship or an expression of love for God. What they are more like is a caution of sorts: “Bear in mind. There is never a time when we are not watching you.”
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