SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE is your standard Oscar-bait movie. It has all the right ingredients to try and garner awards…
- Last Year’s Oscar Winner – Cillian Murphy captured the gold last year, and just like Oscar winners of the past – he does a small indie film on the footsteps of OPPENHEIMER-greatness.
- Muted Storytelling – There’s hardly a pulse in SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE. Everything is under the surface of the characters, told via on-the-nose flashbacks and performances that lend themselves more to the book it’s based on (where we can hear what a character is thinking) than on the big screen.
- Historical narrative… but Fictional – The atrocities of Ireland’s Magdalene laundries are factual and better captured in 2002’s THE MAGDALENE SISTERS. Yet, the narrative framing about the tragedy of children tends to whisper to Oscar voters’ ears.
All of these elements would make an entertaining movie if it just weren’t so damn slow. At only ninety minutes, SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE felt longer than the nearly 4-hour opus, THE BRUTALIST. And that’s a bad thing. Yes, Murphy is good in this role. No, the movie doesn’t support his lead performance. And it throws away a golden opportunity to capture the Magdalene tragedies in a new light.
It’s currently on VOD and should serve as a holiday movie to help audiences sleep this Christmas.