Review: Small Things Like These-Cillian Murphy Versus the Horrid Nuns of Ireland

Oppenheimer has recently taken up weightlifting, switching from the mentally taxing secrets of the atomic machine to the more physically demanding sacks of coal. Recipient: Resident of New Ross, County Wexford, Ireland. Year: 1985.

Yes, in Cillian Murphy's first post-bomb film, Small Things, the Oscar winner's sad eyes struggle to convey the tortured inner life of Billy Furlong, a coal merchant who sells his wares to the financially well-off and the poor. Unfortunately, this "happily" married father of five daughters inevitably passes city dwellers on his daily route in his trusty truck, daring enough not to hang on, even if ailing. A Dickensian troupe, you might say.

Yes, 1985 was a tough time for many in Ireland... and elsewhere too.

Why would Billy come across a barefoot boy, on a cold night, desperately drinking milk from a bowl left outside for his cat? The ragged brat glances up for a second, catches a witness to his lactose theft, but Billy concludes he is no threat and carries on eating.

Can Billy suppress what he doesn't want to see? Why does he fret over the misery of his own relatives, who are doing so well for them? And hadn't his wife (Eileen Walsh) recently advised him, "There are some things you have to ignore if you want to get on with this life?"

If this plot sounds familiar, you may already have Claire Keegan's greatest work. Sold reads of the novella that served faithfully as an adaptation. Winner of the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and ranked 41st on The New York Times' list of the 100 best books of the 21st century, Keegan's Small Things is a great quick read, with a protagonist who is what James Joyce describes as a Dubliner: He kept a certain distance from his own body, casting a suspicious sidelong glance at his own actions. Guilt is a childhood thing, a curse that many of us have had to go through.

Thus, like its source material, the film jumps back and forth in time, telling us of Billy's difficult adolescence, when his adult self cannot shake. His mother, Sarah, a maid, gave birth to him out of wedlock in a strict Catholic neighborhood where such abhorrent behavior would never have been tolerated. Without a sympathetic Protestant employer, the widowed Mrs. Wilson (Michelle Fairley), who gives Sarah and her son a home, and Billy, who realizes that he would have been the one to clean the pet bowl every night. The film can be viewed on the Flixtor free movies website.