2022 – The Banshees of Inisheran
This was a strange movie. After I finished watching the film, my first though was that I liked it, but I wasn’t sure exactly why. The acting was incredibly good, but that wasn’t it. I mean the story. Did I enjoy the plot? I think yes, I did. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it didn’t have a very enjoyable plot. The two main characters were barely likeable, and they made decisions that just didn’t make much sense. But I’ll get to that in a bit.
I’ll give a very brief plot synopsis. Pádraic, brilliantly played by Colin Farrell, is a simple man who is completely content with his life on the small fictional Irish Island of Inisheran off the coast of Ireland. His lifelong friend and drinking buddy is Colm, played by Brendan Gleeson. One day Colm decides he no longer wants to be friends with Pádraic, saying that he is too dull, and that he no longer has room in his life for dullness. So he no longer wants to be friends. Hurt by this rejection, Pádraic attempts to reconcile with Colm, who initially treats him with indifference that soon grows into anger. Colm tells Pádraic that if he ever speaks to him again, he will cut off one of his own fingers. More than once, Pádraic continues his attempts to get his friend back, and Colm keeps his promise, throwing his severed digits at Pádraic’s door, until his left hand is nothing but a fingerless stump.. But when Pádraic’s beloved miniature donkey chokes to death on one of the bloody fingers, Pádraic retaliates by burning down Colm’s house, knowing that his former friend is still inside. The next morning, the two men meet on a beach, and Pádraic says that the feud would only have been settled if Colm had stayed and died in the burning building. The end.
What on earth did I just watch? Wikipedia describes this as a black comedy, but once again, I found nothing funny about the movie. Maybe I’m just being a stick-in-the-mud, or maybe I’m taking the plot to literally. Maybe I’m just not getting the humor. But critics actually praised the comedic content of the film. Personally, I just found it depressing and unnecessarily macabre. Was the death of a lifelong friendship, or Colm’s inexplicable inability to feel any sort of empathy for his former friend’s pain supposed to be amusing? Were the extreme acts of self-mutilation supposed to make me cringe, but chuckle at the same time? They didn’t. Were the dire predictions of death by the mysterious old lady supposed to make me laugh? Were the village idiot, Dominic, played by Barry Keoghan’s desperate attempts to look for love and attention supposed to make me feel awkward, but tickled? They didn’t. They just made me feel sad for him, and sympathetic for Siobhán, Pádraic’s sister, played by Kerry Condon, who was the object of his affections.
I have to think that the things that happened in the film were supposed to be metaphorical. I mean, what man in his right mind would cut off his own fingers to make someone leave him alone? And after the first finger had been severed, what man in his right mind would continue trying to reason with him? I guess the basic plot just made no sense if you take it at face value, because normal people don’t behave that way. And the characters were not portrayed as stupid. So I have to think that it was all a metaphor for something that I just didn’t get. Pádraic was so desperate to have his friend back that he couldn’t see when to leave well enough alone, and Colm was so mentally unstable that he horribly maimed himself. That’s what I got out of the story.
Now… all that being said, the movie can still be enjoyed if you focus on the acting, the poignant score, and the directing. The movie was nominated for nine Oscars, and unfortunately, it didn’t win a single one. All four of the main members of the cast were nominated in the acting categories, but my personal favorites were Farrell and Keoghan. I’ve seen Farrell in other dramas, and had an idea of what he was capable of.
But Keoghan really surprised me. He was so good and so believable as Dominic. The scene in which he asks Siobhán if she could ever love someone like him was so sweet and so sad. Keoghan was absolutely wonderful in that moment. She gently turns him down, but it is the last time he is seen alive on the screen, and when he is later found dead in the lake, I have to wonder if he committed suicide after the rejection. It was never made clear what happened to him.
Then there was the score by Carter Burwell. It was one of those film scores that was incredibly expressive, and did a fantastic job of setting a sad and depressing tone over the entire film. It was drastic and melancholy, and yet somehow beautiful at the same time. It easily draws you into the story and makes you want to weep for the sake of loneliness. Simply enchanting.
And the director, Martin McDonagh, really did a great job of telling the dark and bewildering story without being flippant or apologetic for either the macabre tension or the un-believability of the actions of Pádraic and Colm. It is what it is, and when it comes to it, I supposed I didn’t need to understand the movie to enjoy watching it. I liked it. But again, I’m just not exactly sure why.