From left: Jon Kenny, Brendan Gleeson, Colin Farrell, and Pat Shortt.Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures / 20th Century Studios
- The Banshees of Inisherin
- Written and directed by Martin McDonagh
- Starring Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson and Kerry Condon
- Classification R; 109 minutes
- Opens in theatres Oct. 28
Critic’s Pick
It’s 1923 in Ireland and the IRA is fighting the Free State (a new government that was independent from but loyal to the British Crown.) On the island of Inisherin, you can hear the gunfire from the mainland. The local constable says the Free State will be executing some IRA lads – or maybe it was the other way around. The fighting will soon be finished, the islanders figure – or maybe it will just go on.
If you like, you can read The Banshees of Inisherin, Martin McDonagh’s new film about a feud between two old pals, as an extended metaphor for the idiocy of civil war. Or you can simply appreciate it as a very black comedy about male friendship with two fabulous stars and a starkly beautiful landscape. Brendan Gleeson plays the stubborn Colm rejecting the companionship of Colin Farrell’s bemused Padraic as McDonagh reunites his actors from In Bruges, where they played mismatched hit men.
That 2008 comedy has something of a cult status today and McDonagh’s 2017 hit Three Billboards Outside Epping, Missouri won Oscars for its stars, but with this new work the dramatist-turned-filmmaker returns to the Irish settings of his 1990s plays to produce something more consistent than either of those films. Back on familiar turf – the West Country from where his parents emigrated and where the Londoner spent his childhood summers – he seems far more certain of the social geography than he did in the American setting of Three Billboards. The film shares its name with The Banshees of Inisheer, an unrelated play that McDonagh worked on 15 years ago but never finished. (Inisheer is one of the Aran Islands, but Inisherin is fictional.)
Kerry Condon, right, and Farrell.Photo Credit: Jonathan Hession/Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures / 20th Century Studios
Like Three Billboard, the film revolves around stubborn characters carrying legitimate quests to illegitimate ends. Asked to explain why he will no longer share a daily pint with Padraic, Colm replies that he just doesn’t like him any more. Pressed for a better answer, he eventually offers that life is short and he needs to spend time composing music rather than engaging in idle chatter.
But Padraic will not leave it and an exasperated Colm hands down an ultimatum. It is telling that this revenge for Padraic’s chattiness does far more harm to Colm: an example of cutting off your nose to spite your face that comes perilously close to the literal. It’s here that the civil war metaphor may come in handy for the shocked viewer as Colm makes good on his horrible threat.
If our sympathies have sat with Padriaic to this point – thanks to Farrell’s soft, pleading eyes and furrowed forehead punctuated by the circumflex of his black eyebrows – the pendulum swings as his actions become extreme. Now Colm’s insistence begins to look like constancy as an understated Gleeson brings magnificent solidity to the role.
Padraic’s sweet sister Siobhan is caught between the two, a person of grace and good sense lovingly detailed by Kerry Condon, but also a figure of sorrowful isolation on an island peopled by ill-assorted bachelors and spinsters. The scene where she has to gently discourage the romantic advances of the foolish young Dominic is alone worth the price of admission.
Gleeson and Farrell make the film a delight.Jonathan Hession/Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures / 20th Century Studios
Played with sensitivity and careful balance by Barry Keoghan, Dominic is the village idiot but also, of course, the wise one who will reveal the truths that others avoid. Meanwhile, there is some obvious comedy to be had in the bleak characters of a nosy postmistress and an aged crone offering dire predictions. (She gets most of it right.) And there is outright savagery in Dominic’s abusive father, the corrupt constable.
As always with McDonagh, the result is a tense encounter between his sharp sensitivity to human frailty and his gleeful depiction of human violence. I suppose if you are a student of Irish politics you might object to the implication that the civil war was meaningless – the Free State was replaced by the Republic in 1937 but the divisions lasted for generations. And if you are simply Irish you might object to this filmmaker who has lived all his life in England portraying your people as brutal and benighted – as some critics have.
But what saves The Banshees from these complaints and McDonagh’s macabre extremes are the wonderfully humane performances on the one hand, and the way the story functions as a parable on the other. Both Colm’s initial rejection of Padraic and Padraic’s final crazed reaction are not the stuff of realism or reason but of fairy tales and nightmares, yet Gleeson and Farrell make the film a delight.