As the Irish Civil War rages, domestic conflict of a micro—if no less destructive—sort breaks out on the tiny fictional island of Inisherin in The Banshees of Inisherin (Oct. 21), filmmaker/playwright Martin McDonagh’s masterful drama about alienation, despair, and the physical and emotional devastation they beget. Reuniting his In Bruges leading men Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson for a somber yet surprisingly funny saga about a friendship that sours in unexpected and calamitous ways, the writer/director’s latest proves a profoundly riveting and moving portrait of the consequences of not valuing niceness. Led by a titanic Farrell turn, it is—to date—the best film of the year.
As imagined by McDonagh, Inisherin circa April 1923 resembles a picture-postcard vision of Irish beauty and tranquility, all rolling hills, modest houses, crashing cliffside waves, wandering farm animals, and cheery folk whose lives are spent tilling the land and enjoying afternoon drinks at the local tavern. It’s there that, every day at 2 p.m., Pádraic (Farrell) meets his longtime friend Colm (Gleeson) for a pint or two. One afternoon, however, Pádraic fails to summon Colm from his home, and after the bartender asks if the two might be “rowing,” Colm eventually materializes at the establishment and asks Pádraic to sit somewhere else because “I just don’t like you anymore.” Pádraic is taken aback by this “awful unusual” behavior on his mate’s part, and he’s further put off when, later that night, he finds Colm joyously playing his fiddle with others—meaning the man’s issue is not with people in general, but with Pádraic in particular.
Pádraic thus retreats to be with his sister Siobhán (Kerry Condon), a spinster whose loneliness is evident from her sad eyes and her own queries for her sibling, who—faced with this sudden onslaught of unhappiness—exclaims, “What’s the matter with everybody?” Desolation is omnipresent in this outwardly idyllic hamlet, and McDonagh lets it seep through the cracks of his action in affecting dribs and drabs. Without Colm to keep him company, Pádraic winds up stuck with Dominic (Barry Keoghan), the son of the town’s brutish police officer (Gary Lydon) and a raggedy weirdo who cares little for soap but greatly for Siobhán, much to her dismay. Keoghan is a hilarious marvel as this off-kilter young man, making Dominic’s blunt uncouthness at once grating and an endearing—and sympathetic—symptom of his own melancholy, born from both seclusion and abuse.
In short order, Colm reveals the reason for his rejection: facing older age, he has grown tired of wasting his days and nights partaking in “aimless chatting… with a limited man” such as Pádraic. Instead, he prefers to concentrate on ostensibly meaningful endeavors like his music so that he might leave behind something that lasts. To Colm, Pádraic is “dull,” which is evidently true from Farrell’s cheery and simple-minded demeanor. If Colm believes that this separation will grant him “peace in my heart,” however, he’s sorely mistaken. The Banshees of Inisherin soon devolves into open, if muted, battle, all of it driven by Colm’s desire to make the most of his remaining time, his callous means of going about that, and Pádraic’s increasing confusion, consternation, and outright anger over his former friend’s belief that he’s monotonous and inconsequential, and therefore deserving of being carelessly cast aside.
Simmering tensions begin to boil over when Colm threatens to cut off his finger should Pádraic continue speaking with him—a dare that raises the stakes of The Banshees of Inisherin and propels it toward tragedy. Crosses loom over the landscape, Colm seeks (unrewarding) counsel in Catholic confession, and Pádraic takes comfort in the companionship of his donkey, whom he allows into his home (despite Siobhán’s objections), and who—in Au Hasard Balthazar fashion—is an innocent doomed to suffer for man’s foolish sins. Grim revelations of paternal violence, vengeful ruses designed to isolate, and forlorn departures for more potentially promising shores all ensue, weaved together by McDonagh into a tapestry of resentment, grief, and fury. Civil strife is, at heart, an act of self-mutilation, and that becomes horrifyingly literal as Colm and Pádraic’s feud escalates, leaving no one untouched or unscarred, save for the old witchy Mrs. McCormick (Sheila Flitton) who watches this unfold with wry, detached amusement.
The Banshees of Inisherin is a quiet film that, in the spirit of its title’s mythic creatures, wails loudly and miserably, and yet McDonagh shrewdly interjects regular levity into his material. That deft balance is epitomized by Farrell, who embodies Pádraic as both an unambitious dolt who has little to offer (outside reports about the state of his donkey’s feces), and as a fundamentally kind and loyal man incapable of unprovoked malice or selfishness. One moment, Pádraic is being humiliated by the dim-witted Dominic for not knowing the word “touché,” and the next he’s delivering sharp retorts to Colm (the best of which involves the tango). Farrell brilliantly conveys Pádraic’s inherent goodness while deftly evoking his evolution into a spurred and abandoned individual driven to extreme ends. Moreover, his interplay with Gleeson—who fashions Colm as a giant soggy slab of gloom, distress, and spite—is enhanced by a shared sense of their history together, and by the unhinged weight of their current, catastrophic decisions.
From Condon’s sensitive sorrow and Keoghan’s skittish discomfort to Farrell’s wounded hurt and Gleeson’s headstrong coldness, The Banshees of Inisherin coalesces into a drama about the anguish that causes us to do harm, and the corrosive trickle-down effect such feelings and choices have on those about whom we supposedly care—or, at least, with whom we must coexist. Just as his direction is clean and economically expressive, McDonagh’s writing is far too specific and agile to resort to cheap, “timely” sermonizing about the dangers of hostile communal polarization. Nonetheless, his superb new film resounds as a lament for the casual cruelty that, no matter its initial motivation, poisons the proverbial well: fracturing our discourse, corrupting our sense of right and wrong, elevating indecency above empathy, and instigating assaults on our fellow man (and our own values) until we’re left—even after the bullets stop flying—forever estranged and broken.
