Small Things Like These: Bystander Turned Savior
** ring, ring, ring **
** ring, ring, ring **
** ring, ring, ring **
It would seem odd not to pick the phone up after the third ring. The first ring is an introduction, followed by the second, as I wonder who that could be. Then the last ring prompts a response… to pick up the phone. Not to Bill Furlong, however. He’d let the phone keep ringing.
Bill Furlong, a family man and a coal worker, lives in New Ross, Ireland, with his wife and five daughters. In their town, New Ross, society surrounds a convent resembling Magdalene Laundry, an asylum enslaving society-deemed troubled women to labor and abuse, falsely promising a “proper woman.” Its radiating institutional silence carries darkness over the town, swallowing dissent.
Daughters, mothers, and women were subjected to the demands of their family, possibly married to a preoccupied man such as Mr. Furlong, who no longer wants to succumb to fear and will risk having a “tarnished” reputation. Only his reputation was, nonetheless, a bystander. Someone who could easily be pushed over or paid to turn the other cheek. A bystander wouldn’t say anything and would watch the event play out.
Granted, Bill doesn’t have much dialogue, but his eyes tell the whole story. Every so often, he lets out brief outbursts in his car, the one space he isn’t perceived in. He has seen things no young boy should witness, his eyes unwavering and dark, carrying the tension of his emotionless face.
Silence plays a heavy role in this movie, the terrain for Bill’s internal conflict: Bill communicates through nonverbal behavior, including his deep breaths, coping with his inactions. As though out of a horror movie, young Bill stands at the entrance of an alleyway, basketball bouncing, each bounce losing its height without resistance. Its sound echoes, chopping up the silence and Bill’s inaudibility. As the camera approaches Bill, completely stunned, we cut to his young mother, lying motionless and lifeless on the pavement. His hesitation, to then run to his mother, only to distance himself, paralyzed him. Present-day Bill aggressively cleans his coal-covered hands, his brush digging into his skin, its friction getting louder and louder. He releases anger and distraught, and ultimately helplessness at his trauma.
Bill first witnesses a young woman, Sarah, being dragged by her mother’s hand through the doors of the convent while filling the coal shed. He lurks in the shadows with just enough sunlight to expose his face, emotionless. It almost makes the audience feel guilty and frustrated, as though they are the bystanders themselves, witnessing Bill carry on his day.
One day, Bill passes the threshold of the convent, proceeding with caution, with only one objective: to speak with Sister Mary to clarify an invoice. He does not expect to run into a girl pleading for rescue, to take her to a river as a means of escape, to which his only response is, “It’s not up to me, love,” coldly empathetic. His eyes follow her as she is dragged back to her station by the nuns.
Bill may not be a man of grand speeches, but a man whose resistance emerges from wounds he has spent a lifetime burying. The film ends with him saving Sarah, walking past shocked townspeople, and bringing her home. His transformation into a savior isn’t glamorized by the film. Instead, the gradual build to Bill figuring out the type of person he wants to be, for women, for Sarah, for his own daughters. Both tenderness and trauma coexist in him: he is reluctant to make choices, and when he does, they are all the more powerful. His defiance is immediately met with defense and resistance by the covenant, in which he loses patience.
Bill’s obedience withers away, seeing as the convent reminds the community of its order, its influence, when ringing the bells. The town’s silence is its complicity and acceptance of its horrific truth. The ringing feels mundane yet mind controlling, sucking the freedom, kindness, and light out of the town. As both a hot topic for gossip while also a solution for “troubled girls” to get with the program, the convent triggers Bill’s traumatic past. Alongside Bill, we are made to feel like intruders interrupting an old-fashioned, inhumane practice posing as a solution.
Bill’s silence, once a coping mechanism, becomes the very thing he must reject. It isn’t a heroic awakening but a breaking point – a refusal to be the bystander he once was, to take action. What feels like a slow but gradual resolution to Bill’s bravery, the film's pacing was necessary to get a rise out of the audience. Bill, someone who normally works in the shadows, disrupts the orderly quiet of New Ross, signaling his rebellion; compassion can be a form of rebellion.