Challenging Masculinity: Small Things Like These review

Adapted from Clare Keegan’s 2021 novella of the same name, Small Things Like These is 98 minutes of smouldering intensity.

The camera trains itself almost entirely on Bill Furlong (Cillian Murphy), a coal merchant and father living in New Ross, Ireland in 1985. Much like Keegan’s book (so good my mum accidentally bought it for me twice), the film employs a masculine lens to tell the story of Ireland’s infamous Magdalene Laundries, established under the pretence of housing “fallen women” from the 18th to 20th century. When Bill discovers a young girl named Sarah locked in the coal shed outside of the local convent, he must decide whether to deny his knowledge and subsequent complicity, or face endangering his family’s future in a town where “The nuns have fingers in all the pies”.

A ghostly patriarchal atmosphere hangs over Small Things like These, encapsulated by the film’s stark colour pallet and characteristic haziness. “That world of men”, as Keegan herself puts it, is embodied in the dark omnipresence of Catholicism, and school-boy misogyny, as we are left to wonder who is responsible for the young “fallen” women in the convent. Despite her short screen time, Emily Watson offers a paralyzing performance as Sister Mary, Mother superior of the convent, whilst Murphy’s performance as Bill Furlong is subtle and arresting all the same. His longing expressions allow the present moment to become a springboard for memories of childhood, raised on a farm by a Mrs Wilson and his young mother. Pulled straight from the book, Bill’s wife Eileen (Eileen Walsh) insists “If you want to get on in this life, there are things you have to ignore”, as Bill resorts to ritualistically scrubbing his coal-stained hands, an attempt to absolve himself of the scenes at the convent, and a past characterised by femininity. Similar memories of his (later revealed to be) father, Ned, are characteristically joyous and silly, a sharp contrast with the destructively silent masculinity that gnaws Bill from within. A rift thus appears between the man that he desires to be, and the man that he's expected to be to protect his family: “the ordinary part of him wished he’d never come near the place”.

Walking home from the cinema in the autumn wind, I couldn't shake the impression the film had left of the masculinity it attempts to convey through Bill. Not quite an explicitly Queer masculinity, but not one that can survive within the heteronormative, destructive framework of our current systems either. A masculinity on the fringes, trailing the tarmacked roads that Bill inhabits, unable to articulate itself. An alternative one that is offered to him by Ned, and by his upbringing in a predominantly feminine household. A masculinity of loving and caring that I too have never quite found the words to describe. In the film’s denouement, when Bill marches Sarah from the convent, past the stares of townsfolk, before finally crossing the threshold of the living room, he provides her with the love from a family his mother never had, and in doing so, starts to become the man that he wants to be.