In a small island town off the coast of Ireland named Inisherin, local nice guy Pádraic Súilleabháin (Colin Farrell) joyfully wanders over to his good friend’s house, Colm Doherty (Brendan Gleeson), for their usual 2pm trip to the pub. But Colm doesn’t want to go today, completing ignoring Pádraic in fact, and flummoxing Pádraic who can almost guarantee that the two haven’t been rowing. It turns out Colm has realised that his life is dwindling away, and if he’s going to complete something noteworthy with his life, especially in the field of music, then he’s going to have to do it without spending his days in banal chatter with Pádraic the dullard – Colm has decided he just doesn’t like Pádraic anymore. Written and directed by Martin McDonagh, the movie follows Pádraic as he struggles to come to terms with this new hurtful arrangement, where avoiding his once best friend will be hard, if not out of the question. Of McDonagh’s other works, I know I’ve seen Seven Psychopaths, but it didn’t leave a lasting impression; Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was rightfully renowned, and I haven’t seen In Bruges where these two lead actors, Colin Farrell, and Brendan Gleeson, also feature.
I recently wrote on how Bodies Bodies Bodies took me on a rollercoaster ride, and this is similarly divine. It’s like the movie has put the concepts of niceness and intellectual pursuit in a putty ball, and stretched it, and pulled it, to find new shapes and angles to interpret the same gap in friendship. I went from knowing where each man was coming from, to thinking each side was a fool in a matter of moments, and for many times across the movie. Due to this, The Banshees of Inisherin is a movie in complete control of tone, balancing and shifting between the petty absurdity and tragedy of this feud in seconds. The first church confession scene had me roaring with laughter, and the thought that Colm would realistically rather chop off his own fingers than put up with another second of conversation with this dull man made me laugh repeatedly. Then when the time comes that Colm actually does throw his first finger at the Súilleabháin’s front door, I was pleasantly aghast, as this was to be a spicier movie than I thought we were getting, decidedly more extreme – like Pádraic’s sister Siobhán (Kelly Condon), I thought Colm was bluffing. But when the next four fingers come, it really makes you feel sorrow for this man’s mental state, and the lengths he’s willing to go to mutilating himself to prove a point – one finger can be an exasperated fit of adrenalin, but five is calculated, and angry. Conversely, when we first meet Pádraic, he seems an affable chap, harmless enough, and shame on anyone who wants to shun him, but you do realise that his rudimental dribble would get annoying, and if it was every day, then you might want to shake him off to think straight – it reminded me of the dynamic where my coupled friends will prefer to watch Married at First Sight and gossip around the watercooler about the unlucky and inept, but I find it counterproductive and would rather spend my time watching movies and collecting ideas. I suppose it’s strange that a compromise is never considered where Colm will hang out with Pádraic one or two days a week, leaving him the rest of the time to compose, but I guess that would get in the way of the movie’s exploration of the extremes in both men’s disposition. And I guess the resulting discovery of this caper is that one can afford to be nothing but nice when they have not much else to offer – no ambition, no illuminating thoughts in their head. Niceness can be seen as cheap, and even pitiful, but it’s no good when it’s abused and turned against you; it’ll burn your house down. Similarly, intellectual pursuit can be seen as noble, but it means nothing in the moment, and even less when it fails, like how Colm can’t remember the precise facts as to which century Mozart was prominent – intellectual pursuit is abstract, where a small act of kindness or a shared brew is almost tangible, and can be a lasting memory for the heart equally.
Colin Farrell has rightfully been aged up for this role, with prominent forehead lines and crow’s feet, and I spent the entire movie trying to place who he looked like. I landed on Mark Rylance from movies like Bones & All, which doesn’t feel exactly right, but he does look familiar. Farrell has been a versatile actor for so long that it’s nothing groundbreaking to state it again, and with all the evidence you need coming from last year’s The Batman with how he disappeared into the Penguin – he will be getting a tidy Slice Award nomination for playing Pádraic here though, I can almost guarantee it. Brendan Gleeson is just what this movie needs too, but I do wonder how simple it be to play dry and cantankerous for every scene. Similarly, with Barry Keoghan, I feel most people can act mentally feeble if necessary, and I’m part of the crowd who feels bad about rewarding actors who go there as any real stretch of range. Although, having said that, Keoghan’s character is so that he isn’t easily forgotten, and when he’s not on screen you look forward to the next time he will be again, so he’s definitely doing something right 👍 But I really love Kelly Condon as Siobhán, a downtrodden intellectual trying to keep her own peace on this slow-moving rock. It’s another somewhat conventional role for her, as a woman with more sense than the blustering men in her life, yet still, I admire her performance, and her character worked for me.
I’d also like to remark on how I think the animal characters represent the humans, but I’ll have to think it out as I type. I think it’s pretty obvious that Pádraic is the donkey, with the connotations of a belligerent ass, and Colm is the dog, who is clever, forthright, but enslaved by human will. I think Siobhán is like the horse, since she is paired in shot with the horse as she’s leaving Inisherin, and perhaps the movie is hitting at how she could be majestic if not confined to the gloomy paddocks of this island. A horse is also practical, and I love the speckled face of this horse which indicates to me the misfortune of imperfection in a desired form. Dominic (Barry Keoghan) is, I don’t know, a seabird, in that he is commonly overlooked as a pest, but can soar above the rest with earnestness – he dies at the end, signaling that the immature niceness in Pádraic is also gone too, and Pádraic’s donkey dies as well. There’s also old Mrs. McCormick (Sheila Flitton) who ends up almost taking the form of a MacBeth-style witch, and I like how the movie uses her both in the foreground and background near the end while Pádraic is plotting his course of action. I don’t know exactly what it’s supposed to mean but it’s ominous, and gives the final moments of the movie a sense of importance.
The Banshees of Inisherin really has no right to be as transfixing as it is, considering it’s merely a tale of two old men squabbling. All four leads are getting recognised for their performances at this year’s Oscars, but comparing like-for-like, I don’t think I’m as impressed by these performances as I was with the Irish fare Belfast, from last year, although they are good – I think the screenplay, direction, and swaying tones here, are the real heroes in selling this movie well enough on their own. But by golly gosh, if I’m not four movies into award season and have found some out-and-out stunners already. Although there were some good movies of 2022, I did feel that, overall, it was a negative output, especially with many of the big blockbusters being letdowns. But it seems that the movie schedule has truly saved its best for the tail, and I look forward to discovering what everyone else is saying about The Banshees of Inisherin.
5.0
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