Aaron's Thoughts
In a recent Letterboxd Favorite Four interview, an actor (can’t remember who it was), said that if they want to get preached at, you go to a church service. Movies are about thinking & it forces you to see the world in a different way.
Ever since hearing that, it has really stuck with me. Especially in a time when most filmmakers have to resort to preaching the point because they assume their audience is too stupid to pick up on what they are saying (or too distracted).
There aren’t many examples in modern film of a tough subject being delicately handled without preaching the point to the audience, but “Small Things Like These” is certainly one of them.
Far too often, when we look back on periods of history where atrocity occurs, we have hindsight bias. We think, well how did people let that happen in the first place? That would have never happened if I lived during that time.
This film is actually a great pairing with something like “The Zone of Interest” as both pull back the curtain on how tragedies can and do unfold. While “The Zone of Interest” is focused on showing that from the perspective of someone that is directly involved, “Small Things Like These” is showing it from the perspective of someone who is passively aware of it, but unwilling or able to do anything.
In “Small Things Like These” the audience gets to experience what a normal person in Ireland did during this tragic time. How systems organize and abuse their power. How grief can blind us. How individuals look the other way out of fear that their families will live a lesser life. How society peer pressures everyone into not biting the hand that feeds them.
The film is intentionally a quiet, slow burn. We get acquainted with Bill, his family, and his day to day life before we even start to contemplate that something may be awry. The film is set in the weeks leading up to Christmas, so there are some wonderful sequences of Murphy wondering a small town in Ireland as the town bustles getting ready for Christmas.
The subtleties of the script and how the story plays out won’t be for everyone, but there is no denying the power of choosing to tell a story this way. It leaves you sobered by not only this tragedy, but the tragedy that happens every day in our world. Long after the credits roll, you will even be questioning your own complicity in tragic events.
