- The Banshees of Inisherin
- Written and Directed by Martin McDonagh
- Featuring Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson and Kerry Condon
- Classification R; 109 minutes
- Open in theaters October 28
Critic’s Choice
It’s 1923 in Ireland and the IRA is fighting the Free State (a new independent government but loyal to the British Crown). On the island of Inisherin, you can hear the gunshots coming from the mainland. Local constable says Free State will execute IRA guys – or maybe it was the other way around. The fighting will soon be over, the islanders think – or maybe it will continue.
If you want, you can read The Banshees of Inisherin, Martin McDonagh’s new film about a feud between two old pals, as an extended metaphor for Civil War idiocy. Or you can simply enjoy it as a very dark comedy about male friendship with two fabulous stars and a starkly beautiful landscape. Brendan Gleeson plays the stubborn Colm rejecting Colin Farrell’s perplexed Padraic’s company as McDonagh reunites his cast of In Bruggewhere they played mismatched hitmen.
This 2008 comedy has cult status today and McDonagh’s 2017 hit Three billboards outside of Epping, Missouri won Oscars for its stars, but with this new work, the playwright-turned-filmmaker returns to the Irish settings of his 1990s plays to produce something more cohesive than either of those films. Back on familiar ground – the West Country where his parents emigrated from and where the Londoner spent his childhood summers – he seems much safer about social geography than he was in the American setting of Three billboards. The movie is actually a much later reworking of The Banshees of Inisheer, the third play in McDonagh’s Aran trilogy, which was never staged because he said it was no good. (Inisheer is one of the Aran Islands, but Inisherin is fictional.)
As Three billboards, the film revolves around headstrong characters pursuing legitimate quests for illegitimate ends. When asked to explain why he will no longer share a daily pint with Padraic, Colm replies that he no longer loves him. Pressed for a better answer, he eventually proposes that life is short and he needs to spend time composing music rather than engaging in pointless chatter.
But Padraic won’t get out of it and an exasperated Colm issues an ultimatum. It’s telling that this rematch of Padraic’s chatter hurts Colm far more: an example of cutting off his nose to spite his face that’s getting dangerously close to the literal. It’s here that the Civil War metaphor can come in handy to the shocked viewer as Colm carries out his horrific threat.
If our sympathies have been sitting with Padriaic thus far – thanks to Farrell’s soft, pleading eyes and furrowed brow punctuated by the circumflex of his black eyebrows – the pendulum swings as his actions turn extreme. Now Colm’s insistence is starting to look like consistency as a low-key Gleeson brings a magnificent solidity to the role.
Padraic’s sweet sister Siobhan is caught between the two, a person of grace and common sense lovingly detailed by Kerry Condon, but also a figure of painful isolation on an island populated by disparate bachelors and spinsters. The scene where she has to gently discourage the romantic advances of the young fool Dominic is worth the price of admission alone.
Played with sensitivity and careful balance by Barry Keoghan, Dominic is the village idiot but also, of course, the sage who will reveal the truths that others avoid. Meanwhile, there’s obvious comedy to be had in the dark characters of a nosy postmistress and an old crone offering dire predictions. (She mostly gets it.) And there’s outright savagery in Dominic’s abusive father, the corrupt agent.
As always with McDonagh, the result is a tense encounter between his acute sensitivity to human frailty and his joyful depiction of human violence. I guess if you’re a student of Irish politics you might object to the implication that the Civil War made no sense – the Free State was replaced by the Republic in 1937, but the divisions lasted for generations. And if you’re just Irish, you might object to this filmmaker who’s lived his whole life in England portraying your people as brutal and blindsided – as some critics have done.
But what saves The Banshees of those complaints and McDonagh’s macabre extremes are the wonderfully human performances on the one hand, and the way the story works like a parable on the other. Colm’s initial rejection of Padraic and Padraic’s final mad reaction are not realism or sanity, but fairy tales and nightmares, but Gleeson and Farrell make the film a delight.
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