This review first appeared for Jumpcut Online, September 8th 2022 as part of Venice Film Festival 2022
In Irish folklore, the presence of a banshee symbolises the impending death of a family member. On Inisherin, a small island off the coast of Ireland, where everyone knows everyone, everyone is family. No one in this macabre comedy is safe from the banshees wail.
April Fool’s Day, 1923. Civil War rages on the Irish mainland. Two factions, the Protestants and the Catholics, fighting over a cause unknown to the residents of Inisherin. Pádraic Súilleabháin (Colin Farrell) sets off down a familiar path. He knows it like the back of his dirty hand. It is the path to his best friend’s house, his inseparable compatriot for years, Colm Doherty (Brendan Gleeson) – with a gorgeous border collie in tow. Furiously knocking on his window disturbs not the rigid Colm, to the confusion of Pádraic. He departs, perplexed by the mood of his best friend, the call of Guinness summoning him to the local watering hole. The stinging pang of being shunned leads Pádraic to confront Colm – but it turns out to be as simple as the local Gom: Colm just doesn’t like him anymore. But the banshee’s wail is in the subtext, as Colm’s dissatisfaction with Pádraic leads them both down a path they may not come back from.
Inisherin’s own Civil War is now afoot.
Events unfurl with a precise formality in The Banshees of Inisherin, a comedy blacker than the pint of Guinness the friends no longer share. There’s no fat to trim in this as the shear-sharp script becomes a self-fulfilling banshee prophecy. Dialogue twists itself back around into a joke, such as Pádraic’s sister Siobhan (Kerry Condon), a scene-stealing intellectual with her own dilemma, quips the idea that Colm just doesn’t like him. In which we are humorously reminded of by Colm repeating that exact line straight faced and deadpan. Shots are composed with their punchline firmly in mind. A window exposed to the grey Irish sun behind Colm’s grimly lit face get to show wonderfully affable despair from Farrell’s Pádraic as he walks away from Colm, along with foreshadowing the harrowing events that occur.
Colm himself is searching for the answer to life’s greatest question; how will he be remembered in the grand annex of the world? Colm is an artiste to a fault, taking inspiration from the likes of Picasso and Mozart, of whom Colm waxes lyrical on the continued existence of their art. It provides an intriguing juxtaposition on the Irish Civil War itself – of which no one will remember those murdered in the search of peace.
This is the absolute opposite of Padraic, who is content and settled in his mundane cow-herder life. He has a fond familiarity in knowing the 2 o’clock toll from the church bell means a nice pint with Colm, who instead views him and this lack of aspiration as a detriment to his art. Opposites attract, as they say, but Colm’s polarity to Pádraic has surely reversed.
At one point in Pádraic’s unrelenting tirade to earn back Colm’s friendship he takes it upon himself to dispatch a new friend Colm has made – the repercussions of which Banshees oversees with a calm, endearing way as Pádraic is called out for it, with no jokes to be made in that situation. The management of tone in this macabre caricature of kind buffoons is a miracle. Balancing dry wit with melancholic pathos, McDonagh manages to achieve what a plethora of movies have been unsuccessful at: he allows the audience to digest their emotion before delivering the quick-witted gag.
Even quite mean jokes on this little island, mostly towards the hapless community whipping boy Dominic (Barry Keoghan), are just perfectly in line with the tone of the movie. Each character contributes to the remote feel this Island begets on its residents. Pádraic, Colm, Siobhan and Dominic are all so wonderfully fleshed out, all played with an underlying misery beneath the jest. This is in addition to the fantastic supporting players in the story from a prying priest to a gossip-seeking shopkeeper to a policeman made impotent by the uneventful goings on in Inisherin.
Balancing dark topics of artist preservation with hilarious acuity, the film never stops delivering huge belly laughs, earning every emotional beat. The Banshees of Inisherin is, succinctly, feckin’ brilliant.
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