“Small Things Like These”: Berlinale “Small Things Like These”: Paths to Humanity

This will have a devastating impact on those in formal evening wear when they have walked across the red carpet through the flashlights and are finally sitting in their seats and the room is getting dark! Because for an hour and a half, “Small Things Like These” by Tim Mielants remains mostly very dark. There has never been so much courage for cinematic consistency at the opening of the Berlinale. Usually, on this occasion you always quickly reach into the drawer for light entertainment, but not this time.

The first pictures show what kind of world we are moving in here. Catholic, lower middle class and outwardly well ordered, almost idyllic. Church bells ring over the Irish town, a monastery can be seen, a close-up of a raven. Who doesn’t think of EA Poe’s famous poem “The Raven”, which begins: “Midnight surrounded me eerily as I sat contemplating, lonely, gloomy and sad…” Then an unexpected visitor enters Poe’s house and brings eerie news.

This is also the case here, but only gradually do we find out which visitor comes to Bill Furlong at night, the father of five daughters who works hard as a coal dealer. It is the memory that, once it occurs, can no longer be rejected. Cillian Murphy plays the rather introverted coal dealer with his own truck and two or three employees, as a peaceful and friendly man who begins to wander. When he comes home from work, he first washes off the coal dust before entering the small living room, where the family is waiting for him to eat. These washings have something of a ritual.

Bill is anything but a dominant person. He responds thoughtfully to his overconfident daughters and has no secrets from his wife. Despite all the cramped conditions, this small community obviously enjoys living together. The family is neither rich nor poor and survives frugally. When Bill goes to the bar with the other men, which rarely happens, he only drinks coffee and doesn’t stay long.

The family lives in a small house, and of course they all go to church together, where the nuns from the local monastery hold services. It’s Christmas right now and the festively decorated tree comes from the monastery. Its superior determines what happens here and what doesn’t. Emily Watson plays her with a cutting coldness of heart. When she speaks of charity, it sounds like a threat.

No, the sun doesn’t shine for a second in this film. This is also because Bill always puts out his coal very early, when it is still dark. The monastery is also one of its customers. And once when he was delivering coal there, he saw a young woman being brought there. She screams, complains and begs, but the gate quickly closes behind her. Because this monastery is a so-called Magdalen home, of which there were numerous in Ireland. Over ten thousand pregnant minors were “kept” in such homes until 1996. Because they were sinners in the eyes of the church, they were treated badly. Many of the children born there soon died.

The film has an almost deliberate gesture. All drama here goes inwards, it thunders inside Bill. But more and more his figure becomes a seismograph and the humble attitude he has practiced for a long time begins to crack. The words of the philosopher Ernst Bloch, who spoke about practicing upright walking, apply to him.

In numerous artfully mounted flashbacks, the fog over the past gradually lifts. Bill feels uneasy, even though what is happening in the monastery has nothing to do with him. At least that’s what his wife says to him and also: “It turned out well for you!” Is that true? He doesn’t know anymore. His self-image is shattered and fragments of memories arise in him. His mother was employed as a domestic servant by a wealthy lady and he was one of them as a child. The lady was very friendly to him and his mother, even though she was one of the “fallen girls” (as they used to say in Germany for a long time). Bill is lucky, and so is his young mother – until one day she dies unexpectedly and Bill is alone in the world. The friendly lady takes care of him, he really can’t complain.

Suddenly, thirty years later, his mother’s fate drags him to the depths. He sees her again, washing his coat. The other children had spit on him, the whore child. Now he has long been a respected, hard-working citizen for them. But the image of the girl being pushed into the home doesn’t let him go. That could have been his mother. “Don’t get involved!” friends advise him. The nuns could do him a lot of harm, especially now that he and his family are doing well. But with all the memories in his heart, he’s not feeling well anymore. He is the son of an unmarried mother who, in the eyes of the powerful Catholic Church, was nothing more than a sinner who should atone.

And so Bill begins to go on a sort of inner journey that leaves his family worriedly wondering what’s wrong with him. But he can no longer pretend he doesn’t know anything. He knows that in the Magdalenenheim young women, like his mother, are tortured and humiliated. Twice he finds the rebellious girl he had initially observed in the monastery’s coal cellar. Now they’re locked up here. The decision grows within him to take her away from here and take her in with him. But in a small town in the shadow of an all-controlling monastery?

But Bill doesn’t hesitate any longer, come what may. At this point, as he begins to follow his inner voice, this extraordinary film stops. This person has made up his mind and nothing, no matter how seemingly sensible arguments, will be able to dissuade him. This is good news at the start of the Berlinale.

»Small Things Like These«: Ireland/Belgium 2024, directed by Tim Mielants. Starring: Cillian Murphy, Eileen Walsh, Michelle Fairley. 96 min. Fri. February 16, 3 p.m., Verti Music Hall; Fri. Feb. 6, 6 p.m., Verti Music Hall; Sun. February 18th, 7 p.m., Colosseum 1.