The Banshees of Inisherin (Dir Martin McDonagh, 1h 54m, 2022)

Martin McDonagh, that great Irish playwright and screenwriter, a man who can make a morality play out of a duo of hit-men sent to Belgium, and a bleakly funny meditation upon the hollowness of revenge from the tragedy of a mother's loss, has done it again. By now no stranger to this column (we'll get to the only entry of his filmography I've not covered, Seven Psychopaths at some point), this delver into the human condition, this master of capturing the bleakly funny, the bloody violent, and the beautiful has struck again, this time in the hinterlands of Ireland, where his early plays, set in Galway, took root. Martin McDonaugh is coming home, after sojourns in Belgium(In Bruges), Hollywood (Seven Psychopaths), and rural Missouri (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), and he's not alone.

For, at the centre of The Banshees of Inisherin comes a familiar duo reunited, this time as former friends turned foes, as a a friendship cut adrift rages into open hostility and escalating acts of blackmail and violence, across the desolate bleakness of Inisherin (a fictional island off the Irish mainland, largely shot on the Aran Islands). On the shoulders of folk musician, Colm Doherty (Brendan Gleeson), and his former friend and drinking buddy, Pádraic Súilleabháin (Colin Farrell), (reunited for the first time since In Bruges) McDonaugh builds a tale of a friendship sundered that stands for myriad themes, from the ending Civil War on the mainland, from which Inisherin is divorced, to creativity in the face of mortality, to male loneliness and the seething anger that simmers beneath, to the deeply, grimly funny, unsettling nature of masculinity and the Irish character.

To Inisherin itself; whilst moments of Three Billboards meditated upon the landscape of Missouri, here it feels, in all its moods, from the dark, foreboding clouds that seem to preface much of the film's more violent acts, to the seemingly omnipresent rain, to the undoubted beauty that this part of Ireland has, like another character in this strange and twisting tale. Accompanying this, as we follow Pádraic inland from the coast, comes the first encounter with the music of Ireland, that haunts this film; Pádraic's introduction, as we follow him from the harbour, is a portrait of an affable, likeable figure, waving or nodding to unseen friends as the camera follows his progress. All is not well, though, for arriving at his friend, Colm's house, he finds his friend unreceptive, ignoring his knocks on the door, and barely stirring when, framed by the window, Pádraic tries to encourage him down to the local pub-already, McDonaugh is placing barriers between his former friends, shooting Farrell from Gleeson's perspective through the window and vice versa.

Colm's lack of response to his friend's visit soon becomes openly hostile behaviour, Colm moving to avoid him in the sole communal space of the island, the local pub, or blanking him in conversations, Pádraic soon attempts to have a heart to heart with his friend, stepping outside to speak to him, to try to get to the bottom of why his life-long friend is now ignoring and blanking him, only for this gentle, likeable figure that Farrell cuts through the opening half of this film to be told that, far from causing offence, or his friend ailing, Colm's rejection is brutally simple; he no longer wants to be friends, and wants to fill his days with, rather than the inane prattle of the likeable but ultimately dull Pádraic, the act of creating music. It's a scene that is as shocking (and indeed funny, as Colm's last recollection of their meetings together is being regaled by the contents of Pádraic's pony's faeces) as it is brief, leaving Pádraic bereft at the lost of one of his few friends, and here, he takes solace in his sister, Siobhán, (Kerry Condon), a well-read figure that feels, at turns, trapped in the doldrums of Inisherin, and yearning for something beyond it, and his beloved donkey, Jenny.

Colm for his part is almost the antithesis of the affable, if ultimately empty figure of Pádraic; his house is crowded with a record player, masks, and music, both of his own composing and classical, and at points he feels like a figure alien from island life, that perfect cantankerous sensibility that only Brendan Gleeson can bring to a role on full display here bristling to the surface, as an increasingly desperate-and undeniably distressed-Pádraic tries to make amends and reconnect with his friend. At points, for we see little of the film from Colm's perspective, Around them swirls boredom, peace and the insularity of island life, who enjoy the "nice" Pádraic's company, though they pry into each other's lives.

The rest of the island for example, largely consists of the nosy (the owners of the local shop that Pádraic delivers milk to, and his sister frequents for post and groceries), the terminally dull-(the majority of the population, including the local priest, who has little time for his flock, and Jonjo, the barkeep)-the downright hostile, in the form of the violent and sadistic policeman, Peadar (Gary Lydon) who beats his wayward and troubled son Dominic (Barry Keoghan), and the distant, and eerie figure of village elder Mrs McCormick, who practically haunts the second half of the film like a shade. There is a sense, alongside the character sketches we have come to expect of McDonagh's work, that these are somehow empty people, that for all the life that McDonagh breathes into them, their existence is little more than cypher-late in the film, we see a major figure leave for the vibrancy, and the life of the mainland, and, in a sense, escape this humdrum existence.

Around the central trio, there is a sense of a positively Beckettian existence, of this island cut off from the world in which boring empty men live out boring empty lives of drinking and empty chatter until they die, in peaceful, but largely empty surrounding. They are memorable, yes-practically every single one of them leaves an impression upon you, most notably the doomed, and out-of-control Dominic, who plays confidant to Pádraic, attempts to woo Siobhán, and who feels-at points shockingly-far more alive than most of the rest of the island, and Mrs McCormick, who seems to be at once impossibly otherworldly, arriving out of the gloom to warn Pádraic, and to lead one character to another's floating corpse, and worldly and weary. For both of them, and for the island at large, DoP and long-time McDonagh collaborator, Ben Davis manages to once again find beautiful tableaux, and moments of stillness and calm in the film as its narrative builds towards a crescendo.

This calm is about to be shattered, as, with Pádraic's attempts to speak to Colm met with increasing hostility, so the older man lays down a brutal ultimatum, that does, as Siobhán later confronts Colm, begin to raise questions about the musicians mental state. Stop talking to him, or Colm cuts off a finger for every time he tries from his playing hand. Despite Siobhán confronting Colm, in arguably the funniest scene in the film, where she defends the dullness of her brother, and decries the idea that Colm can simply abandon his friend, whilst Colm admits that at least part of himself is amused by the situation he has created, and refuses to back down, the situation continues to escalate.

Throughout it all, the film never quite loses that bleakly funny edge that McDonagh's filmography is known, and become greatly quotable for, but a new edge of melancholy, of emptiness pervades the film-Padráic's life without his friend is empty; we see him strugggle to share conversations with his sister whose interest in books, and in a life outside the island divides them. So he wanders on, alone, and increasingly unsure of himself, spurred on by the at-turns pathetic and malovelent Dominic, increasingly unable to deal without his friend, until, drunk and abusive he rounds on Colm, that hollow "nice" man slowly revealling his true feelings. Resolute, Colm makes good on his threat in horrifying fashion.

A finger cut and thrown does little to end their bad blood, and from here, things start to spiral out of control, threatening to destroy not only a friendship but families, livelihoods, and each other to finally end this quarrel. It's easy to see the shattering of Colm and Pádraic's friendship, and the increasingly bitter and ever-increasing tension that follows as their tit-for-tat slowly engulfs Pádraic's family and the close-knit village, as a metaphor for the Irish Civil War. We see Irishness rear its head throughout the film; its music, practically personified in the figure of Colm, is nigh-omnipresent, the titular piece "The Banshees of Inisherin" at once beautiful, and symbolic of what he has had to sacrifice to make it. The war itself, still raging-and occasionally heard-on the mainland, juxtaposes that of Pádraic and Colm, together with an idea that this battle between people who have once lived side by side is both nonsensical and deadly serious, Pádraic admitting to his former friend that this will end only when one of them is dead.

But Banshees of Inisherin is more than a film about conflict and masculinity in crisis, the titanic figures of Gleeson and Farrell destroying each other, and in Colm's case, mutilating himself to prove a point. It is more than a film about Irish identity, about Irish conflict. It is a nigh-perfect character study of two men falling apart, a film of loss, of violence, of artistry, and of men raging against their mortality even if boredom and empty lives draw them down. It is, simply put, the best film Martin McDonaugh has ever made-and that is high praise indeed.

Rating: Must See (Personal Recommendation)

Note: this review was written before the Academy Award nominations were released on Tuesday 26th January. Congratulations to all those nominated for their sterling work on The Banshees of Inisherin, and all other films I've reviewed that are up for Oscars.

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