OPINION | REVIEW: ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’

Irish musician Colm (Brendan Gleeson) simply can’t afford to have any more of his time wasted by his feckless buddy Padraic (Colin Farrell) in Martin McDonagh’s blistering funny tragedy “The Banshees of Inisherin.”
Irish musician Colm (Brendan Gleeson) simply can’t afford to have any more of his time wasted by his feckless buddy Padraic (Colin Farrell) in Martin McDonagh’s blistering funny tragedy “The Banshees of Inisherin.”


Second Take is an occasional feature that revisits movies currently in theatrical release.

It sometimes feels as if a certain category of screenwriters (and here you can pretty much just substitute in "playwrights" when I say this) start a project by issuing a challenge to themselves: "What if I write a two-person comedy, but one of them is mute?" Or "How's about I write a drama about a family who all have amnesia?" It's the kind of thing a regular screenwriter -- just hoping they can actually finish a project of any kind -- likely wouldn't think to do, but the playwright is an artist of a different sort of feather, wanting to play with the form in order to see where it takes them.

In any event, this theory could certainly apply to playwright-cum-filmmaker Martin McDonagh, whose previous works, including "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri," and "In Bruges," acclaimed as they have been, both offered trace elements of this kind of heavy-handed constructionism, like a faint chemical aftertaste in your pudding -- slight, but noticeable.

After the challenge of writing "Billboards," a film about the goings on in rural middle America (a vibe he seemed to misconstrue, at least in this critic's eyes), McDonagh has returned home, as it were, back to his native Ireland, albeit on a small (fictional) island just off the mainland. In "The Banshees of Inisherin," set in 1923, as the civil war rages on (island inhabitants can hear the occasional crack of gunfire, and see plumes of smoke rising up from the otherwise pristine green hills of the countryside proper, just across the narrow inlet between them), there seems to be a growing sense of the turmoil and strife that will eventually roil the entire country for bloody decade after bloody decade.

Not everyone on the island concerns themselves with such dire complexities, however. When we first meet Padraic (Colin Farrell), in fact, he doesn't seem to have a care in the world. He shares his home with his loving sister, Siobhan (Kerry Condon), and his beloved miniature donkey, Jenny; conducts a relatively viable business selling his cows' milk locally, and has his best mate, Colm (Brendan Gleeson), to hit the pub with each night, in order to tip a few and gab. You get the sense the entire canopy of his life, as it were, is supported by these distinct poles, such that when Colm informs him one day, seemingly out of the blue, that he no longer likes him, and wants to cease all contact immediately, Padraic reacts as if his carefully propped up world has collapsed on him.

Colm's argument is that Padraic is "dull," and has no ambition other than to hold tightly onto his familiar props on this tiny island, not much concerning himself with anything else (when the topic of the war comes up, he flatly says he can't keep it straight what everyone is fighting about in the first place). Colm, a musician, wants to spend the latter years of his life in focused ambition, hoping he'll be able to craft a song of merit enough that it will outlive him, a concept the far less self-aware Padraic finds daft.

Naturally, Padraic doesn't take his friend seriously at first, and keeps pestering him to hang out anyway, from various angles, including putting a word in to the local priest, who thinks to mention it during confession. That is, until Colm issues a peculiarly self-eviscerating edict: From that point forward, every time Padraic attempts to interact with him, he will cut off one finger from his own left ("fiddlin'") hand. Even as Padraic, and the rest of the small town, who make it their determined business to know everyone else's, assume Colm is bluffing, they are soon disavowed of that notion.

Where the narrative goes from here is more or less a straight shot down to a circle of Dante's Inferno: Padraic's life is systematically upended, and as a result, his persona as a "good man" (a label he and Siobhan insist upon more than once), withers. Without his various supports to keep him tethered, he quickly drifts into being anything but good.

McDonagh is walking a tricky slack-line, here, as often is his wont, starting as a somewhat contrived domestic dramedy between two friends (one of whom is acting almost solely in service to the peculiar demands his author makes of him), and, eventually, as both a metaphor about the artistic process and its sacrifices, and a demoralizing analog for the strife of the Irish people themselves (the pointlessness of one-up revenging and holding grudges leading to societal dissolution, in other words).

Working (very hard) for him, here are his pair of leading men, reuniting from their stint together in "Bruges," who help ground McDonagh's fancies in something that still feels emotionally significant (also helping out here: Barry Keoghan's turn as Dominic, a wayward village lad who serves both as the film's creepy jester, and its tragic ne plus ultra).

The film is touted as a comedy and a drama, and while there are several irreverent moments that are genuinely mirthful early on, by the film's dour third act, the former is entirely absent from the latter, in favor of hard, bitter truths about mankind's ruination. Still, as manufactured as elements of it can seem, it remains pretty devastating (and animal lovers take note, prepare to be really bummed out). McDonagh might well have set himself up with a considerably complex challenge, but -- as one critic who was decidedly not a fan of "Billboards" -- I'd have to say, in this case, he's more than met his mark.

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‘The Banshees of Inisherin’

Cast: Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon, Barry Keoghan, Gary Lydon, Pat Shortt, Jon Kenny, Sheila Flitton, David Pearse, Brid Ni Neachtain

Director: Martin McDonagh

Rating: R

Running time: 1 hour, 49 minutes

Playing theatrically

 


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