[TIFF 2022] REVIEW: ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’ gets snippy in a small town
Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson star in The Banshees of Inisherin, written and directed by Martin McDonagh.
Anyone who grew up in a small town can relate to the feeling of wondering what else might be out there. Are you missing out on life experiences by staying in your hometown, talking to the same folks every single day? And if leaving isn’t an option, how far will you go to live your life as you want? What if the hometown crowd can’t leave each other alone?
It’s a simple premise, but in the hands of a talented cast and writer/director Martin McDonagh, it becomes a lot more entertaining and tragic than you’d expect. The Banshees of Inisherin might be set in an unfamiliar time and place - April 1923 on a tiny agrarian island off the coast of Ireland - but McDonagh’s script packs in so many delightful observations that it could almost take place here and now. Whether it’s the shopkeeper who steams open people’s mail to sate her appetite for gossip or the creepy old woman who stands in for the Grim Reaper, the island of Inisherin feels lived-in and quirky, with many small dramas happening simultaneously.
One of these dramas involves two friends, Colm (Brendan Gleeson) and Pádraic (Colin Farrell). One day, Pádraic heads over to Colm’s house, as he does every day, to walk with him to the local pub. Except Colm isn’t there; he’s apparently avoiding Pádraic, heading to the pub without him. When Pádraic tracks him down, Colm is evasive about what’s bothering him, but says that he simply doesn’t want to talk to Pádraic ever again.
This news is profoundly confusing to Pádraic. He admits that he and Colm have had fights before, but he can’t figure out what the issue might be this time. Finally, he gets Colm to be straight with him: Colm finds Pádraic dull. Colm fancies himself one of the more cultured residents of Inisherin: he’s a musician who performs and composes with his fiddle, and he decorates his home with antique theatrical masks. Faced with a sense of despair that he’ll die on the island without ever accomplishing a work worth remembering, Colm’s decided he simply can’t tolerate Pádraic droning on about his farm animals every night.
Pádraic is stunned. No matter how many ways Colm tries to explain it, he can’t fathom why Colm would feel this way. And at first, the other townspeople are on Pádraic’s side. They think it’s silly that Colm would make such a fuss. But as the days go by, and Pádraic’s efforts to patch things up with Colm grow increasingly desperate, everyone tells Pádraic to just give it up. And as the rift between the former friends grows, Colm delivers an ultimatum: he’ll cut off one of his fingers for every time Pádraic speaks to him - even if it means losing the ability to play the fiddle.
Farrell’s character Pádraic tolerates Dominic (Barry Keoghan), a young man from his village.
It’s an almost cartoonish escalation, but Gleeson and Farrell are so good here that it feels as natural as can be. McDonagh’s rapid-fire writing couldn’t be in better hands, and the two leads are buoyed by a strong supporting cast, including Kerry Condon and Barry Keoghan. The cast seems to have studied the contemporary dialect closely; many lines end with a “so” or “like”, further cementing us in a specific location. And that setting matters; this story coincides with the winding-down of the Irish Civil War, when two sides of Irish society fought each other over reasons that may be as ephemeral as the one dividing Colm and Pádraic.
The movie presents us with multiple characters who feel stuck in different circumstances, and lets us watch whether they try to work their way out of it. Colm’s solution is petty and somewhat selfish, but at times you sympathize with his desire for peace and quiet. Pádraic, meanwhile, only wants to return to the life he knows. He’s that person from a small town who is content to spend his whole life in one place. And Pádraic’s sister Siobhan (Condon) is the one with wider ambitions: the escalation of her brother and Colm’s feud occurs just as she decides to move to a bigger town and take a job at a library. She makes the enlightened choice that many of the other characters can’t conceive of.
You may go into The Banshees of Inisherin expecting black comedy, and the first two thirds deliver on that. But like the ending of his previous works, especially In Bruges and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, the final act takes on a more solemn, melancholy note. Just as Three Billboards ends with Frances McDormand’s character driving off to commit a revenge killing, Banshees concludes with threats of murder, prophecies of doom, and the realization that tragedy has won out over quaint small-town comedy. It’s always funny until someone (or someone’s digits) get hurt.
You could be forgiven for noticing how well Banshees would also work on the stage, given all McDonagh’s work as a playwright and theatre director. This isn’t to say that the script doesn’t work as a movie; even though Inisherin is a small place, aerial shots at either end of the movie prove how miniature the people are compared to the landscape. There’s something about exploring this environment via cinema that would be lost on the stage. What would remain, though, are McDonagh’s words and characters, which shine no matter where you find them.
The Banshees of Inisherin gets four stars out of four.
Stray thoughts
Best recurring cameo in the film goes to Pádraic’s miniature donkey Jenny, who follows him around like a dog.
I want McDonagh to release a short film just about Keoghan’s character Dominic.
The final scene plays like a mirror image of this scene from the Season 4 finale of Peaky Blinders.