Companion pieces: Small Things Like These

 


No film review this week as I've already seen Gladiator II and I don't fancy Wicked.

I was completely drawn in by Cillian Murphy's mesmerising performance as Bill Furlong in Tim Mielants's adaptation of Small Things Like These a couple of weeks back, and it got me thinking about other films I've seen in the past year that complement its quiet, sad little story. Both of these movies are worth a watch and pick up on ideas from Small Things.

If you're interested in Ireland in the 1980s, you might like: That They May Face The Rising Sun (Pat Collins)
Another novel adaptation, this time from John McGahern's final work. It's another quiet, contemplative sort of film, but much more gentle than Small Things. Ostensibly, it's about British-based couple Joe (Barry Ward) and Kate (Anna Bederke), who are deciding whether to take over Joe's family farm in rural Ireland or stay in London for Kate's art gallery business. What it's really about is everything and nothing, a year in a little Irish village where the circle of life, love and death continues to turn.
This sounds rather heavy, but it's handled with a light touch, full of gorgeous scenery and a soothing classical score. Much of the story unfolds as a series of the village's older men visit Joe and Kate for chats at the kitchen table, led by a cracking turn from Lalor Roddy as Patrick Ryan.
Despite the presence of the English-domiciled Joe and the time period in question, the Troubles don't make an appearance, and the Catholic church is a much less oppressive presence than in Small Things. That said, it's always there ticking away in the background, causing some friction and implied heartache for one village resident who may have grown up adjacent to the Magadelene Laundries.
The ending is almost as sad, but it's a wistful sadness that makes you smile gently, rather than feel angry.

If you're interested in Catholic nuns and their missions, you might like: The New Boy (Warwick Thornton)
The behind-closed-doors atrocities committed by the Australian government against the Aboriginal population have some similarities with the cruelty of the Magdalene Laundries, but The New Boy presents a more nuanced take on the role of Catholic nuns in this.
The titular New Boy is an Aboriginal orphan, played by newcomer Aswan Reid, who is captured in a sack like an animal and taken to an orphanage run by Sister Eileen (Cate Blanchett). The New Boy is reluctant to talk or adopt Western habits, but he quickly shows himself to have a magical ability to help others. He's also fascinated by Jesus.
Sister Eileen, who is assisted at the orphanage by a sweet-natured Aboriginal nun, "Sister Mum" (Deborah Mailman) and Aboriginal farm manager George (Wayne Blair), has secrets of her own. Her attempts to impose Christianity on her charges seem wrong now, but she does it from a position of genuine care, trying to protect the orphanage boys and keep them in education for as long as she can.
Another film full of beautiful scenery, this time in the Australian Outback, and with some surprising moments of dark comedy. Reid himself as a strikingly lovely boy and his largely wordless performance is highly impressive for someone so young.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

ANORA: a triumph, or just the return of T&A?

Image
Sean Baker’s latest film took both Cannes and the critics by storm, but is it a real future classic, or a case of the Empress’s new clothes? Anora answers that question literally in its first moments. The Empress is pretty much naked. Opening in the strip club where its heroine Ani (Mikey Madison) works, there’s not much in the way of female clothing on show. A soundtrack of a Take That song does add an amusing counterpoint; the sensible tones of Gary Barlow were never meant to be the backdrop for dimly-lit crotch grinding and hair-flicking. There’s a good chunk of this before the film’s gritty-Pretty-Woman, postmodern Cinderella storyline kicks in: there’s a customer who wants a girl who can speak Russian, which Ani can. More grinding and a private housecall later, we discover that the Russian customer is Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), a young oligarch’s son let loose in New York. At this point, the storyline switches to a sleazy iteration of an early-2000s teen comedy, all parties, adventu...
Read more

CONCLAVE: Pope Fiction?

Image
The Vatican is really made for the screen. Grand, echoing marble hallways, arcane rituals and elaborately-garbed characters. And power, lots of power. Amid this sweeping grandeur, Edward Berger has taken Robert Harris's 2016 novel and surprisingly, turned it into an unusual but classic whodunnit. The only death is that of an un-named pope, which opens the story, but the Dean of the College of Cardinals, Thomas Lawrence, finds himself turning detective when electoral rivalries threaten to hand control of the Catholic Church back to a reactionary patriarch. Lawrence, played with a visibly heavy heart and weary body by Ralph Fiennes, is in charge of the conclave where the new pope is voted in. To add another level of crime fiction tropery, the cardinals are sequestered in the Vatican itself, making this a locked-room drama of sorts.  The cardinals themselves are played by some of the best character actors working today: Stanley Tucci particularly stands out as the liberal Aldo Bellini...
Read more

Gladiator II: worth the wait?

Image
Almost twenty-five years after the original, Ridley Scott has revived his Oscar-winning classic, Gladiator, with a new cast and a new story. Big sandals to fill, and does this big-ticket sequel do the business? As a rule, I'm not a fan of sequels, prequels or franchises. They encourage lazy storytelling and unsatisfying endings and there are too many of them. However, I made an exception for Gladiator, as it stars one of my favourite actors, Paul Mescal, and also because my mum wanted to come to the cinema with me for the first time since the 1990s. Both mum and I enjoyed the film and we agreed on the following. It really is best seen on a big screen; Scott's recreation of Rome is fantastically detailed, and the use of a 1:1 scale Colosseum set full of baying extras for the arena scenes really does makes it believable. It's a grand visual spectacle and the music, which includes Lisa Gerrard's classic Gladiator theme, is pretty good too. There's only so much you can ...
Read more