Photo - Searchlight Pictures
Colin Farrell in 'The Banshees of Inisherin'
Colin Farrell in 'The Banshees of Inisherin'
The Irish Civil War carries on as The Banshees of Inisherin begins; the thud of shells can be heard on the Isle of Inisherin as fighting continues beyond the horizon. The island’s lone Gard, the brutal policeman Peadar, looks forward to a jaunt on the mainland where he’ll take part in a firing squad—the Free Staters are executing an IRA man or the IRA is executing a Free Stater, he neither knows nor cares. Meanwhile on the island, a civil war erupts for reasons entirely apolitical between the milkman Pádraic (Colin Farrell) and the fiddler Colm (Brendan Gleeson).
Their struggle begins when Colm abruptly refuses to go to the pub with his drinking buddy Pádraic. “I just don’t like you no more,” Colm says bluntly. Confused and dejected, Pádraic persists in asking why, forcing Colm to explain that he no longer has time “for aimless chattering … my life keeps dwindling … I just don’t have time for dullness anymore.”
The trailer for writer-director Martin McDonagh’s film frames it as blarney Irish comedy with two stubborn men butting heads over pints of stout. Yes, there is humor early on, but Pádraic’s intransigence—born of hurt feelings—has consequences when Colm makes good on his threat to cut off one of his own fingers each time Pádraic tries talking to him.
The acting is worth the Academy’s attention come nomination time. Gleeson embodies Colm with mountainous gravity, but the stony façade is fracturing from within. As he tells the priest in confession, it’s “the despair.” Nowadays, he’d be diagnosed with severe depression and given medication that might or might not work. In that time and place, he had no recourse but to brood. Farrell gives a deeply etched performance as a decent but simple fellow, earning subsistence by hauling milk from his three scrawny cows to market on his horse cart. He lives with his sister Siobhán (Kerry Condon), an educated woman stifled by the island’s claustrophobic society, and his donkey Jenny, a creature as affectionate as a house pet. The siblings bicker over whether Jenny can sleep inside.
The uncanny is represented by Mrs. McCormack (Sheila Flitton), a wintry figure who goes about in a long, hooded cape. Her sinister bearing and oracular pronouncements—some of them come true—suggests one of Macbeth’s Weird Sisters displaced from Dark Age Scotland to 1920s Ireland. Philosophy is expounded in the drunken setting of the pub as Colm, who aspires to compose enduring music, argues with Pádraic for the primacy of art over a life well lived. Mozart is remembered, “Who remembers nice?” he sneers.
The Academy might also consider the cinematography. By day, the waves reflect sunlight filtered through pale cloud cover as they roll without end to the green hilly shore. Night falls darkly on an island without electricity; kerosene lamps shine dimly in the inky interiors. Many scenes are visual poems with rhyming images. As Pádraic cradles Jenny, killed as a result of his feud, his horse looks on sadly from outside the window.
The Banshees of Inisherin is a haunting picture of madness and spite, a fable about blood feuds, the persistence of the irrational and the failure to let go. As Pádraic puts it, “Some things there’s no moving on from.”
The Banshees of Inisherin is screening at the Downer Theater and the Marcus South Shore Cinema.
