Small Things like These, directed by Tim Mielants and adapted by Enda Walsh – and based on the novel by Claire Keegan – is a powerful, moral tale of the decisions people take, even collectively, when the powers above them appear too strong to break. It’s also a testament to individual strength, under both personal and community strain.

The film tells the story of an understated man, Bill Furlong (Cillian Murphy), who discovers the unsettling truth of an institution, managed by Roman Catholic nuns who take in so-called troubled women, in his local Irish town. Called ‘Magdalene Laundries,’ they existed mainly in Ireland and housed women who’d either been pushed out of their families, or their local culture, due to the likes of having premarital sex or being pregnant and single. While, on the outside, a nearby community might be aware these women are being looked after and giving a trade to learn, the wider reality was a life of fear and coercive control and conditions.

In the film, Bill is a committed family man, who lives with his wife Eileen (an excellent Eileen Walsh) and their five girls, and he also owns a coal company who deliver locally in New Ross, Ireland. His day-to-day is physically tough, but he’s also clearly suffering from a mental health distress, but this is an era – even in the 1980s – where such things weren’t discussed as they are, not to a deeper extent, and certainly not in a religious small town. It’s also a story told in flashback, where we see Bill’s mother – loving and warm – look after him, and they’re both also given a place to live by a wealthy, female landowner. The depth of looking back at Bill as a child will give you the insight to decisions he takes later on, and also why he’s deeply passionate about the right choices, even if he doesn’t know what to do with the emotion of a situation, other than bury it deep inside.

One day, when dropping off a coal order at the Magdalene Laundry, a young woman named Sarah (a poignant performance from Zara Devlin) runs to him and begs for help, and she’s beyond desperate, and although – at that point – she’s take back in by the Nun’s and we’re given the impression she’s being looked after in a positive form (in a very creepy way), it’s clear how affected Bill is, and how it gives him further flashbacks of his own upbringing. Small Things like These uses its short runtime intelligently to show the bigger story. It’s also aided by a stellar ensemble cast, it’s brutally believable, and even one where you can understand why many people might pretend to themselves that such an ‘institution’ is helping people, at a time when the church and everything connected had a deep power in Ireland.

Shot in the shadows, rain and snow of a cold winter, Frank van den Eeden’s cinematography frames the conflicted world of Bill with absolute brilliance, and Murphy portrays the character superbly. From the early shots of him delivering coal to customers, we witness the world from his perspective, and it’s not heavily melodramatic, it’s measured and authentic. This film is a rare piece of filmmaking in relation to its subject matter, often calm and quiet on the surface, it simmers with moral choices for its lead character, Bill, who is placed under immense pressure from the ‘ordinary’ world around him, thus metaphorically mirroring his day-to-day job as a coal merchant.

Powerful and subtle, a tough morality tale to tell that’s instigated by a haunted history where religion and power ruled over the way of life, more than it might do today. It offers reflective empathy to the women caught up in it, through no fault of their own. Small Things Like These is poignantly told and expertly acted, to show that even the tenderest touch of kindness can begin to unravel a circle of unsettling events, as it offers hope, fuelled by the nature of true human kindness, out of the darkest times.

Small Things Like These is streaming now on Prime: https://amzn.to/4jFjGFd