Movie Review: Small Things Like These

 

Michael's Movie Grade: A-

A heartbreaking and incredibly emotional film. 

This movie tells the story of a coal merchant who accidently discovers the horrors of how young girls at a convent are being treated. He is conflicted because the nuns running that convent are very powerful. He wants to help the girls but is afraid of what might happen to his own family if he does. This conflict and inner turmoil are truly the focus of this film. Seeing this tears at his own heart and we are forced to face the question of what we would do in his place. A film built on inner turmoil is of course very dependent on the actor playing the lead. Luckily this is one of Cillian Murphy's (who won an Oscar for his lead performance in last year's Oppenheimer (best screen performances. Even during quiet scenes in which he has little to no dialogue he perfectly conveys everything that is going through his mind. If it wasn't for this performance this movie would have nowhere near the emotional impact it does. Yet his performance is not the only thing that makes this movie great. This is a slower paced film, but this slower pace works perfectly here. This movie starts off as slice of life story of this family (a happy family enjoying Christmas contrasts perfectly with what will come later). This lets us understand perfectly who this man is and his relationship with his family, which of course will become the heart of story as it goes on. Because of this the emotional moments hit much harder. This film also benefits from more subtle storytelling. The film never dwells on showing us the horrors the young girls are being subjected to. Most of them are implied rather than shown and the ones we see are never shown in a gratuitous way. The fact that much is left to our imagination, especially in a scene where a girl is begging our main character to take her away if only as far as the river, makes these scenes all the more disturbing. Some scenes simply send chills down my spine as if I was watching a horror movie. The subtlety of this movie even comes down to the basic storytelling. We see many flashbacks to our main character as a child, the transitions here are seamless and never disrupt the flow of the film (at first you may not notice that these are flashbacks, but you will catch on quick). 

A truly great movie.