“Small Things Like These” at the Hop on January 18

A version of this review previously appeared on Artful in November, 2024 (but without the trailer, above) after I saw this film at the Nugget Theater. It has turned out to be a movie that I continue to reflect upon, especially its atmospherics and Cillian Murphy, who, as observed below, delivers this story “almost entirely on [his] face.” Here’s another chance to see this small intimate movie where the drama, though understated, is no less formidable.

Small Things Like These, a film based on the book by Claire Keegan, is the story of Bill Furlong (Cillian Murphy), a coal merchant, set in 1958 in a small Irish town that contains, on its outskirts, one of Ireland’s now infamous Magdalene laundries. The laundries were run by the Catholic Church for decades; they housed, in total, tens of thousands of young women who had “misbehaved” by becoming pregnant or otherwise flaunting (or maybe just failing to observe) social expectations for women. The laundries were punitive, like prisons, and babies were taken from mothers and set up with or “sold” to adoptive families. In recent years, the history of the laundries has been revealed and recognized for the horror it was.

The story takes place almost entirely on Murphy’s face, swimming in the infinite sadness of those ice blue eyes.—Sean Burns, North Shore Movies, 11/18/24

A deliberate film that uses small moments to examine one of the great questions of our time: how good people let bad things happen, and how we might push back against the dark.  —Helen O’Hara, Empire Magazine, 11/13/24

In Small Things, the townsfolk whisper about the laundry but mostly just ignore it. Not Bill Furlong, who comes face to face with the dehumanizing and cruel treatment of the young women, and the creepiest of Mother Superiors, a chilling character portrayed by the inimitable Emily Watson. Despite threats to his own well-being and that of his family, Bill steps up. What he does is a small thing that is not small.

Small Things Like These is playing this weekend on January 18 at 2:00 pm and 4:30 pm at the Loew Auditorium in the Black Family Visual Arts Center at Dartmouth. Tickets are available here.

Programmed in conjunction with the Tuck School of Business class on "Moral Reasoning: From Machiavelli to The Bomb to AI” and as part of Dartmouth's Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration, with the theme of "Moral Courage in the Face of Uncertainty.”

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And in case you are wondering . . . Susan B. Apel shuttered a lifelong career as a law professor to continue an interest (since kindergarten) in writing. Her freelance business, The Next Word, includes literary and feature writing; her work has appeared in a variety of lit mags and other publications including Art New England, The Woven Tale Press, The Arts Fuse, and Persimmon Tree. She connects with her neighbors through Artful, her blog about arts and culture in the Upper Valley. She’s in love with the written word.