New & now: The Banshees of Inisherin
Martin McDonagh returns to form in a mournful tale about a friendship that's run out of steam (if it ever had any steam in the first place)
When we think about movies with the shortest span of time between winning an Oscar and the beginning of audience backlash, the first two that come to mind are Crash and Green Book. But let’s not forget Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, which was only nominated for Best Picture, but, despite its initial critical acclaim, is now considered among the worst kind of Oscar bait1: smug and self-serious, with a hollow core.
Mostly it was considered a huge misstep for writer-director Martin McDonagh, who had brought such a darkly funny sensibility to his previous films In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths. Three Billboards, in trying to be a Very Important film, was dour and depressing, with a wholly unearned uplifting ending, and in which the only humor to be found was in a tiresome running gag about a lovestruck little person. Thankfully, with The Banshees of Inisherin, McDonagh has shaken off the need to make movies your boring co-worker says you just absolutely must see, and returned to what he does best: quirky stories about unlikely relationships that balance dark, often brutal humor with melancholy.
For Inisherin, McDonagh brought back the secret sauce that made In Bruges work so well, and that was teaming up Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell, the two best things from Ireland since Kerrygold butter. Although playing very different roles this time around, their natural chemistry, the kind in which they seem to be constantly sizing each other up, suits them especially well here, playing longtime friends who have a falling out.
Padraic (Farrell) lives the simple life of a farmer, sharing a house with his sister Siobhan (Kerry Condon) on the tiny fictitious island of Inisherin. It’s an odd place, picturesque but that’s all it has going for it. Though a calendar reads 1923, it might as well be fifty years earlier, where everyone still relies on oil lamps for light. There are no children to speak of, and the only women to be found are a nosy shopkeeper, a wizened old crone who’s regarded as the village soothsayer, and Siobhan, who longs for better things anywhere else but there. The Irish Civil War is happening so close by that the villagers can see explosions in the distance, but nobody seems terribly concerned about it.
Least concerned of all is Padraic, whose most pressing issue is arguing with Siobhan about whether or not his pet donkey is allowed in the house. A man of simple pleasures, the highlight of his existence is meeting his best friend, Colm (Gleeson), at 2 o’clock every day to have a pint (or three) at the pub. That comfortable routine comes to a halt one day when Padraic, after discovering that Colm has already gone to the pub without him, is told unequivocally that Colm no longer wants to be his friend.
“You didn’t do nothin’, I just don’t like ya anymore,” Colm explains, and there’s no malice in his voice, just cold hard truth. “But you liked me yesterday!” Padraic protests, although as the film goes on we wonder how much that was actually true. Colm reluctantly explains that, feeling his mortality looming on the horizon, he’d rather spend whatever time he has left writing, playing and listening to music, rather than wasting away the hours drinking and listening to Padraic’s blathering.
Though Colm sounds like he’s put a lot of thought into this decision, Padraic refuses to accept it. He demands to continue arguing with Colm about it, until Colm becomes so frustrated that he threatens to cut off his own fingers one by one if Padraic doesn’t stop speaking to him. Padraic doesn’t think he’ll really do it, and continues badgering Colm, until one day he sees Colm outside his house, followed by an ominous thump on the front door.
Until things start going to absurd lengths, resulting in bloodshed and arson, neither Padraic nor Colm can be held entirely at fault. While what Colm does isn’t nice, he’s right that we shouldn’t feel obligated to spend our limited time on Earth with people we don’t actually like. Padraic acts like a spurned lover at times, crying, glowering at Colm from across the pub, and chasing off one of his music students, believing him to be a potential replacement best friend.
At the same time, no one likes to be told that their company is no longer wanted, let alone that they’re boring and maybe a little dumb. Colm does not seem to take any pleasure in being brutally honest with Padraic, but at the same time one wonders if there was a better way he could have gone about it. He speaks to a priest about being in “despair,” and it’s puzzling and a little sad that he decided the solution to it was cutting out one of the people who cared most about him from his life.
Then again, it seems like this has been a long time coming. It’s very likely that Colm and Padraic’s friendship has always been at least a little one-sided. Even beyond their obvious age difference (Colm is old enough to be Padraic’s father), they have little in common. Colm’s house, decorated with marionettes and masks, suggests that he did at one time live a life dedicated to pursuing the arts, and whether he ended up on Inisherin, or was simply never able to leave, is unknown. Padraic’s house looks unchanged from when he was a boy, and any indicators of artistic or academic pursuits belong strictly to Siobhan.
There’s a refusal to meet each other halfway: Padraic has no interest in learning anything about music, and Colm has no interest in teaching him. They simply want different things from life, and their friendship has run its course. It happens to everyone, but most of us just hang on out of some misplaced sense of propriety, wondering if maybe it would be easier to just cut off one of our fingers instead.
McDonagh’s script is careful to not portray either man as better than the other, and doesn’t demand that the audience take a side. Colm is smart, but not nice. Padraic is nice, but not smart. Both of them take turns being completely unreasonable, much to the consternation of everyone around them. It’s sheer stubbornness that gets them to where they are by the end of the film, still stuck on that tiny, miserable little island and wondering where to go from there.
Looking like nothing so much as a weary bulldog, Gleeson gives a career-best performance here, matched only by Farrell, who could have played Padraic as a one-note country bumpkin, but gives him depth and soul. He’s genuinely heartbroken over the loss of his friendship with Colm, with the wounded look of a middle schooler who’s just been told he can’t sit at a particular lunch table. His best moments are not sparring with Colm, but with Siobhan, who acts as both sister and mother to him, while struggling with her own guilt about wanting to leave him behind. She more than anyone else is exasperated with the whole situation, of these men and their egos and refusals to back down, at one point shouting “You’re all feckin’ boring!”
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Barry Keoghan as the perpetually inebriated Dominic, who occasionally stays with Padraic and Siobhan to escape his abusive father. He’s devastating as a tragic turn on the comic relief character, casually blurting out that his father sexually abuses him in one scene, and clumsily admitting his feelings for Siobhan in another. He could be anywhere between 18 and 30, it’s never clear, his cherubic face belying his already stooped, beaten down body. He desperately needs a friend, and maybe that’s what Colm and Padraic need to understand. Even if your world is as tiny as a little nowhere island, you can’t get through it on your own.
It’s probably not a coincidence that Crash, Three Billboards and Green Book are all about the white liberal fantasy that, in order to solve racism, all we need to do is meet each other in the middle and understand that, beyond skin color, we’re all just human beings.