PLOT: Pádraic (Colin Farrell) is content with his lot in life on the isolated Irish coast. He lives with his kind sister (Kerry Condon) and delights in two things – spending time with his miniature donkey, Jenny, and his daily trip to the pub with his best friend Colm (Brendan Gleeson). Then, one day Colm decides he no longer wants to be Pádraic’s friend, cutting him off completely. The result of his callous cruelty to his long-time friend will prove to have violent repercussions that will thoroughly change both men forever.
REVIEW: Martin McDonagh is a master at mixing pathos and comedy. His movies are frequently hilarious but heartbreaking, and The Banshees of Inisherin might be his most shattering work to date. An examination of male friendship, sadness, and isolation, will hit home for anyone who’s ever lost a friend for petty, inexplicable reasons. More than that, it’s a deeply sad study of how callous cruelty poisons the soul and utterly ruins lives, even if that may not be the intention.
Brendan Gleeson’s Colm doesn’t hate Pádraic. He’s simply going through a transition in life where he feels like his time is running out and thinks his friendship with Pádraic is a waste of time, as he deems him dull. He’d rather occupy himself with other things, such as fiddle playing. That means cutting his friend off without compassion, which shatters Pádraic.
I’m tempted to write that Colin Farrell is never better than he is in The Banshees of Inisherin, but the fact is that he’s always been excellent. He was masterful in In Bruges, and his chemistry with Brendan Gleeson was so strong that McDonagh’s reteamed them here. Farrell has a shaggy dog sweetness to him, with perhaps the saddest eyebrows in the world. Pádraic is maybe a bit dull, but he’s also the nicest person in the village. He’s kind to everyone but the town’s sadistic policeman. He knows this violent man beats and torments his son (Barry Keoghan), who everyone considers the village idiot (with him often hiding out in the home of Pádraic and his sister). When we first see him enter the film, he’s walking through a valley with a smile on his face, with DP Ben Davis showing a rainbow shining behind him. Throughout the film, we slowly see him lose his sweetness, with him, in many ways, the victim of Colm’s toxicity.
The trailer for The Banshees of Inisherin does present Colm’s furor and Pádraic’s reaction as semi-comedic, and it is – at first. But eventually, it becomes tragic, especially once you realize as an audience that the older man is far from well mentally, with him starting to hack off fingers whenever his former friend tries to talk to him. Gleeson has a less showy part than Farrell, but in the moments where the two speak, there’s a real sense of comfort between these seemingly mismatched men, who could pass for father and son.
The movie does head inevitably towards tragedy, but it never goes down the way you think it will. McDonagh also keeps the film free of any sense of cliche or shmaltz, with plenty of f-bombs (although its sounds more like “feck”) and memorable moments. It may be the only movie where a priest and the person confessing to him start telling each other to “feck off.”
Kerry Condon from Better Call Saul (Stacey Ehrmantraut) also makes a considerable impression as Siobhan, Pádraic’s more practical sister, who longs to leave Inisherin behind. The same goes for Barry Keoghan, in a role that initially seems comical but later turns out to be the film’s most tragic.
As usual, McDonagh has made an evocative film that deserves much contemplation. Indeed, I wish I had more time to sit with it, but the need to file during a film festival makes that challenging. Suffice it to say, and I found the film alternately hilarious and heartbreaking. It’s a riveting experience from start to finish. Something about McDonagh’s work affects me deeply, and this might be him at his most insightful about friendship and the way a broken one can also break the people involved.
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