Small Things Like These

The year is 1985 and Bill Furlong, a hardworking coal merchant, is waiting for Christmas in grey and rainy southeast Ireland with his family. The family has five daughters and money is tight, but generous Bill still donates money to those less fortunate than himself. When delivering coal to a client, Bill sees a young woman being dragged against her will to work in the Magdalene laundrette operated by the Catholic Church. Bill is shocked by this sight, and memories of his own troubled childhood hit him hard. He would like to help the women working in the laundrette, but his wife Eileen tells him to forget the whole thing, fearing that their daughters would face the same fate.

In Small Things Like These, based on Claire Keegan’s novel, director Tim Mielants and the masterful Cillian Murphy handle with great skill and sensitivity Ireland’s collective trauma through the experiences of one person. Between 1922 and 1998, tens of thousands of women were captured and forced to work in the Magdalene laundrettes by the Catholic Church, on account of “inappropriate behaviour,” such as pregnancy outside marriage. One quarter of them were sent to these laundrettes by the state, and one tenth of the women forced to work in inhumane conditions died. The trauma still lives on regardless of the state’s official apologies.

Jaakko Jokinen (translated by Herman Tikkanen)