Director – Tim Mielants – 2024 – Ireland – Cert. 12a – 98m
*****
A coal delivery man is troubled by the recurring sight of a deeply traumatised young woman at one of his regular customers, a convent – out in UK cinemas on Friday, November 1st
Bill Furlong (Cillian Murphy) runs a company delivering coal to customers in and around Wexford, Ireland. It’s tough, backbreaking work, as is evident from the sight of his assistants loading up his truck, one bag of coal loaded onto the back by two men. He’s happy with his men, who do a good job. Doing his rounds as driver and delivery man (locked-off camera looking out from the driver’s cab) he carries one sack at a time himself. Finishing up delivering to the local convent, where he’s required to leave the coal bags behind the door in the designated coal house, he witnesses a scene where a young woman clearly doesn’t want to be in the care of the head sister.
He comes home. As is his wont, he furiously scrubs the coal black off his hands, producing a pool of blackened water in the bathroom sink. He talks about it to his wife at home. She reminds him it’s not his concern. Besides, his two eldest daughters attend the convent school next door to where the nuns take in the unwed mothers, and the plan is for his three younger daughters to go to the school in due course. She is a good, understanding wife, and his five girls are well-looked after and well-adjusted.
He is tormented by personal demons. Memories of the stern Mrs. Wilson (Michelle Fairley) who took in his mum (Agnes O’Casey) and him when he was a small boy (Louis Kirwan) and, one Christmas, gave him a hot water bottle which is the last thing a boy would want for a Christmas present. He remembers his mum going outside and having a seizure, the last time he was to see her alive.
On his rounds, he returns to the convent with a delivery. After putting the coal in the coal house, he enters the main building to sort out the invoice and is confronted with the distressed young woman he saw before, begging him to take her away from the place. The head Sister Mary (Emily Watson) is furious that he has come into the house, and points out a problem with the order which he will have to make a return journey to sort out. At that point, he’ll be paid. It’s a major nuisance, but he doesn’t complain. The hardened sister clearly has no concept that she’s messing him about.
Meanwhile, the thought of the young woman keeps troubling him…
This is bravura and hard-hitting storytelling from director Mielants, who seems to be blessed with an ability to put the camera in exactly the right place in every shot to tell this story in a uniquely arresting way. There is also a denseness about the photographic palette, so that the saturation of the town and county location slowly seeps into the viewer., combined with some very clever use of sound as a relentless, insistent throb like a bad experience that you can’t simply dismiss because it won’t go away.
Within this remarkable filmic form, Murphy gives a career best performance as a man rendered somewhat verbally inarticulate by his past who is nevertheless determined, when it eventually comes down to it, to stand up for his values and do the right thing, however costly. He is onscreen most of the time, and is backed up by some striking support roles. Watson’s dour Sister Mary doesn’t get that much screen time, but projects a bleak and hardened humanity that’s not to be messed with, however internally messed up it might be: one of her finest screen performances in years.
The abused young woman at the convent, later seen crawling on floors and hiding or perhaps incarcerated, cut and blackened, in the coal house and whose name is revealed as Sarah Redmond, is heartbreakingly performed by Zara Devlin. By way of contrast, Bill’s wife Eileen (Eileen Walsh) provides Bill with a rare comforting, anchoring presence. In the flashback sequences, Fairley’s Mrs. Wilson gives off a similarly cold vibe. Child actor Kirwan shines as Bill’s younger self.
In short, this is an unexpectedly tense and affecting drama, breathtakingly put together and carried by its arresting performances.
Small Things Like These is out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, November 1st.
Trailer: