Small Things Like These

Last night my nephew and I saw Small Things Like These and I was incredibly moved by its theme of quiet heroism.  Bill Furlong (Cillian Murphy) is a coal merchant in a small town in Ireland in 1985.  He is the hard-working father of five daughters and his wife Eileen (Eileen Walsh) considers him to be too kind-hearted because of his concern for the less fortunate.  When he makes an earlier than usual delivery to the local convent, he discovers a young pregnant girl named Sarah (Zara Devlin) locked in the coal shed.  He brings her inside the convent and is taken to meet Sister Mary (Emily Watson), the Mother Superior, who implies that his younger daughters will not be admitted to the the convent school if he reveals what he saw and then gives him a "tip" for his services.  He begins to suspect that the many pregnant girls living at the convent are there against their will and are mistreated but he is conflicted about what to do.  Eileen and several townspeople want him to forget what he saw because he can't do anything about it but he has flashbacks to when his unmarried mother Sarah (Agnes O'Casey) was taken in by her employer Mrs. Wilson (Michelle Fairley) when she became pregnant with him (the young Bill is played by Louis Kirwan) and wonders what might have happened to him if someone hadn't intervened.  He spontaneously returns to the convent in the middle of the night and, when he finds Sarah locked in the coal shed once again, he makes a decision.  This is definitely a slow burn but I was so riveted by the story that I was genuinely startled when the screen went to black (my nephew mentioned that he could have kept watching for another hour).  I actually really enjoyed all of the subtle symbolism (the ringing of a church bell is especially ominous and the scenes of Bill scrubbing his hands at the end of the day are portentous) and the use of a bleak color palette to represent the hardship of Bill's life makes his small act of kindness even more powerful.  Murphy gives an incredible performance because you see everything he is feeling with very little dialogue (the one tear falling from his eye almost undid me) but Watson gave me chills with the malevolence she conveys over a cup of tea.  This is a haunting character study about man who refuses to turn a blind eye to wrongdoing and I highly recommend it.