WWN Movie Critic Sister Beatrice Reviews ‘Small Things Like These’

ADAPTED from the novella by Claire Keegan, the Cillian Murphy starring tale of the shocking secrets lurking within the walls of a local convent in 1980s Wexford is in cinemas from the 1st of November.

WWN sent its culture and film critic Sister Beatrice to review the movie.

“I love a good science-fiction movie, tales so tall the mind can hardly comprehend the flights of fancy a writer must embark on to render such vivid fever dreams.

And ‘Small Things Like These’ is no exception, this tale is nearly tall enough to scale the wall of the convent and run to the local Garda station only to be driven straight back to the convent gates by a guard who simply says ‘another one escaped Sister, I’ll take my freshly washed shirts while I’m here’.

As a scholar on the triumphs of the Catholic Church in Ireland and nothing else, I was offended I was not enlisted as a consultant, were that the case I could have steered these film makers in the direction of accuracy.

If the director of ‘Pope Francis: Vampire Hunter’ had the courtesy to consult on his script you’d think this crowd would do the same, but no. And the result?

A film more blasphemous than ‘The Exorcist’, not that I’ve seen it, and more offensive than ‘Spotlight’, not that I’ve seen it, and more shocking than ‘Father Stu’, I have seen that and Mark Wahlberg can’t act for shite.

‘Small Things Like These’ posits a society complicit in the code of silence which gave the church so much of its power, but that’s not true, we were always very vocal about the eternal damnation awaiting anyone who spoke out. Also, the loud anguished screams of our victims was sort of what kept us going.

I’m thankful this movie (a more accurate title would be ‘Small Things That Never Happened But Sure If They Did, Get Over It’) didn’t come out a few years prior as it could have posed the risk of influencing the government to not exclude 24,000 survivors of the homes, or Heaven forbid completely cut church involvement in the national maternity hospital.

As I sat watching this diatribe, aside from having impure thoughts about Cillian Murphy the one thing that stuck with me was how thankful I was that art like utterly fails to affect people in any meaningful way because if it did people wouldn’t stand for how the Church runs from accountability and financial restitution at every turn.

My verdict? Two out of five Hail Marys, and those two are mainly for the production design which really knocked it out of the park recreating what a shit hole New Ross was/is.”