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Small Things Like These (2024, dir. Tim Mielants): A Hand for Small Things
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How could such a horrific act have been tolerated for decades?
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Great evil tends to be solemn. It is exposed through stark contrasts and grave scores, denouncing the system’s substance or the perpetrator’s face. The audience’s anger is an honest one that needs no belittling, yet the texture of that response is cleaner than one might think. It ends with pointing fingers at villains from a safe distance, using that gesture to confirm one’s own ethical sensibility; the emotional arc, in turn, is as grand as the evil itself.
Tim Mielants approaches great evil through the small agonies of small individuals. Instead of asking “Who committed such a horrific act,” he asks, “How could such a horrific act have been tolerated for decades?” Faced with this new question, small spectators are no longer at ease.
Despite its ostensibly heroic ending, Bill Furlong remains, throughout, a man who shrinks into himself. He is no figure of resistance. Rather, he is one who has diligently held his place within a system of silence and secured a stable life — unaware, perhaps, but nonetheless a beneficiary of that system, even its participant. The happiness of his cherished family was guaranteed by maintaining an unspoken good…
