Project Hail Mary
Small Things Like These
I watched Small Things Like These and Project Hail Mary back-to-back on an airplane last week. I had already seen Project Hail Mary on my outgoing flight and watched it again after seeing Small Things Like These on the way back home.
Project Hail Mary
I found Project Hail Mary laugh-out-loud funny. I’m a big fan of Ryan Gosling’s deadpan delivery and his pratfalls in the movie had me in stiches. I was also surprisingly moved by the film and afterward sat quietly in my seat thinking about it.
While there are many comedic scenes, there’s nothing funny about the premise of Project Hail Mary. Written in 2021 by Andy Weir, who also authored The Martian (adapted into the 2015 film starring Matt Damon), the book and movie focus on a desperate, last-chance mission to save the earth. (I’ve been told by those with much more expertise than me that the scenario is unlikely at best. I’m sure they’re right, but it didn’t take away from my enjoyment or its impact on me.)
Project Hail Mary isn’t about superheroes; it’s about ordinary humans doing extraordinary things. Sometimes on purpose, sometimes not. In an exchange Ryland Grace (Gosling), the “hero” of the film, thanked the astronauts for taking on something that he felt incapable of doing.
Ryland Grace: “Commander Yao, I really appreciate what you all are doing.”
Commander Yao: “I mean, you would do the same.”
Grace: “I would choose just not to go at all. I don’t have the bravery gene that you all have.”
Yao: “Trust me. It’s not a gene. You just need to find someone to be brave for.”1
That last line stuck with me. Both in terms of who we choose to be brave for and who needs us to be brave on their behalf.
In a summer of intense storms, tornados, earthquakes, record heat waves and domes, wildfires, and smoke-filled air across the planet, the evidence is clear. Nature is sending us messages, huge neon billboards, begging us to pay attention and take action.
The trouble is that every day there are many other important issues that are experiencing their own Hail Mary moments. While certainly challenging, these feel more immediate and more within reach compared to the existential crisis of our planet.
But all of them depend on us having a healthy planet.
We need to understand that this is a Hail Mary moment. We need to be brave for our children, our children’s children, and all future generations. We need to be brave for our planet.
I know I’m not doing enough. I need to be brave and do more. The good news is that there are many people already working on this. The challenge is identifying which individuals and organizations are most effective and the best way to be involved and support them.
If you have ones to recommend, please let me know in the comments.
Small Things Like These
Project Hail Mary uses humor and star power to deliver its message. Even so, it’s very title shouts to us to do more. Small Things Like These takes the opposite approach. It does not shout from the rooftops. It does not wrap itself in humor or offer a spoonful of sugar to help the message go down.
Small Things Like These is based on a true story about an act of bravery on a much smaller scale but no less significant.
Small Things Like These takes place over Christmas in 1985, when devoted father and coal merchant Bill Furlong (Cillian Murphy) discovers startling secrets kept by the convent in his town, along with some shocking truths of his own. The film reveals truths about Ireland’s Magdalene laundries -- horrific asylums run by Roman Catholic institutions from the 1820s until 1996, ostensibly to reform “fallen young women.” It was adapted from the Booker Prize nominated novel by Claire Keegan.2
Bill Furlong is a witness with wounds of his own that compel him to see that there is someone he must be brave for. In the small town where he lives and works, everyone knows the power of the Catholic Church and knows what he risks in standing up.
The film slowly, quietly reveals the dilemma and the danger. On a side track, it gives us an understanding of Furlong’s wounds and why what he has witnessed tears at him. It also gives brief, yet telling, glimpses into how the other people in the town have come to grips with this known and yet unacknowledged situation that pains him so. And how they acquiesce to save themselves and their children. As his wife tells him, “To get on in this life, there are some things you have to ignore.”3
It is very much a movie about who we are to be brave for. As one reviewer noted,
Small Things Like These makes a man the protagonist, something I went in wondering how they were going to pull it off. It turns out there is a very good reason for this, as Small Things Like These is very much about doing the right thing in the face of injustice, even if you’re not the one experiencing it.4
This hit home. When I read books or watch movies about World War II, I often wonder what I would have done. Both in Europe but also here when “about 120,000 people of Japanese descent were forcibly relocated and incarcerated in ten concentration camps in the United States.”5
Would I have been brave enough to step up, to challenge what was going on, to protect those around me?
It is no longer an abstract, philosophical question. Each day people are taken, deported, disappeared. This too is a Hail Mary moment.
I have been doing small things locally but need to do more. I need to find the time to be involved, so later on, I’ll know what I did, who I was brave for.
I will reach out to those who are active locally. I’d also like to know how best to be involved on a larger scale – both in support of those who are suffering and to challenge those who are behind this.
Again, if you know of individuals or organizations doing this work or actions to take, please let me know in the comments.
Thank you for all your good work and for helping me to do more.
To be brave.
What’s Your Story?
Have you seen Project Hail Mary or Small Things Like These?
If so, what lessons did you take from them?
If not, what other movies have had an impact on you?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Or send in a short reflection (up to 250 words) on a saying, quote, song, or poem that speaks to or for you. We’ll post it here on Substack and on the Building Bridges Word by Word website.
Next steps? Check out the story guidelines and the steps for submitting your reflection. Questions? Email us at mscribner.buildingbridgeswbw@gmail.com.
I look forward to hearing from you and working with you to post your story.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12042730/quotes/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/small_things_like_these
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/small_things_like_these
https://www.fruitcakeenterprises.com/blog-cinemaholic/2024/11/9/small-things-like-these
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans
I read one and saw the other—and I appreciate your thoughts. One theme that stayed with me from both Project Hail Mary and Small Things Like These is that ordinary people become extraordinary the moment they decide someone else's well-being is worth their own risk.
Your work with Building Bridges reminds me of exactly that. Creating a place where people can share their stories, discover common ground, and begin building bridges across their divides is its own act of courage.
Thank you for doing your part, Megan. I understand the feeling of looking at all the need in the world and wondering where to put my energy. What you're doing is one answer to that question, and it is helping.
Oh, yes, that is another theme! Thanks for sharing it. I love reading stories about the remarkable ways people reach out to help others, often people who are strangers to them. Their actions do indeed lift them from ordinary to extraordinary and in turn lift our hearts and give us hope.
While I don’t see my work with Building Bridges anywhere close to these extraordinary people, I do greatly appreciate your shout out and support of Building Bridges!