McDonagh’s Masterpiece: “The Banshees of Inisherin” (2022)

Here’s a hot take: no one has a more complete mastery of the English language than the Irish and few come close to the long tradition of marrying crushed dreams and stunted lives with gallows humor in quite the same way. There is a rich vein of black, absurdist humor that, if it doesn’t heal the gaping wounds of existential dread, is mined expertly for cauterizing them. 

Martin McDonagh has released a cinematic masterpiece in “The Banshees of Inisherin”. It may be his most complete statement as a filmmaker and this is saying something. Like many, I love “In Bruges”; “Seven Psychopaths” is a gem that I wish more people had seen; and “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” may have been his best film of the three. I hate “best of” on principle, and on any given day, I might well have said “In Bruges” instead. Hell, I can’t even choose and I wrote that idiotic sentence.

However, I do know this: “The Banshees of Inisherin” is his masterpiece. At lest, in cinema. McDonagh’s stage career is already mythic and towers over both sides of the Atlantic (and I am  remiss that I’ve not read any of his plays, much less seen them performed…”remiss”? Try “ashamed”; if his film work is as strong as it is, I can only guess what his stage work is like.)

It also helps that his two central characters are fleshed out and fully realized by two of the finest actors of their generation. Brendan Gleason as Colm and Colin Farrell as Padraic are more than outstanding. Both disappear into their respective roles and the dialog flows fluidly; the well-turned phrases, the acute listening the actors do, and the sheer rhythm of the film as a whole feels so unforced and therefore, more devastating the farther along we go. 

It would be simple enough to say that the movie is about two friends, one of whom just decides one day that he doesn’t like the other and comedy and pathos ensue. We could walk away with a reliable description of a plot that would say nothing more about lives lived in isolation, frustrated dreams, stunted creativity and stunted lives. The description would not give us much to reflect on in terms of how our interpersonal conflicts are mirrored in larger ones, of how our lives are allegories.

But really? That’s the plot in a nutshell, and what McDonagh and his players do with it is a tour de force. Farrell’s Padraic is nice man; but he’s deadly (almost literally, it turns out) dull and it is this latter character trait that has lead Colm to cut him out of his life. Colm is well aware of his encroaching mortality and he wants to spend his time doing more than listening to two hours of  someone going on about the quality of his donkey’s shit. 

This could lead us to a facile interpretation of both men. Padraic is a nice man, he is stunted; but as Farrell portrays him, we also encounter the weight of a kind of unspoken history, of the toll taken on one man’s imagination and apparently rather blinkered view of the world. McDonagh contrasts Padraic not only with Colm, but with his sister Siobhan (a never better Kerry Condon), as well. Siobhan may be the smartest person on the island. She has an inner life that bumps up against the insularity of where they live and the small mindedness that abounds wherever she goes (her mail is opened by the woman who runs the general store in the village and who pesters people for gossip (well, she call it “news”). She asks Padraic at one point if he is ever lonely and he genuinely doesn’t seem to understand the question.

In theory, Siobhan and Colm could be seen as cut of the same cloth. It becomes clear, however, that she wants more from life and has dreams to pursue. While Colm shares that, he is on his way out from this world. Siobhan is on her way into it. As for Padraic, he simply lives moment by moment. There is, however, no introspection or self-awareness there, but you suspect that somewhere buried down deep in him, there could be. Again, it’s all in Farrell’s performance of incomprehension and his frustration at that incomprehension that he never seems to grasp is his alone.

By contrast, Colm is a man ready to grow, to become something more than he’s been. We have no idea of what bound the two, but even the pub owner wondered at why they were friends in the first place. No one is willing to call Padraic dim to his face because they don’t want to hurt his feelings, but Colm is definitely far more well-regarded as someone with talent (he is an expert fiddler and we discover early on that he is working on a composition) and learning. 

And this is when you begin to feel as palpably as anything the frustration that Colm feels. The time wasted, the descent toward life’s end, and what else he could have been doing. Gleeson brings a world weariness to the role that just feels so very earned. Now having said all this really makes “Banshees…” sound lacking in humor and nothing could be further from the truth. There are moments where I laughed out loud to my own surprise and found myself bouncing back and forth between more laughter and near tears (of frustration and tragedy) but not as a result of tonal inconsistencies that often plague lesser writers. 

Every scene is crafted with wit and shrewd observation and understanding of the human condition and how isolation, insularity, and a lack of awareness (of ourselves, let alone others or the world around us) affects our humanity, how it shapes us and how rare it is that we escape the narrow mindedness these elements bring with them. Siobhan makes good her escape and it is gutting, of course, for Padraic, but you also get the feeling that he will - despite his protestation otherwise - continue on his way (“Some things there’s no moving on from, and I think that’s a good thing”). 

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Barry Keoghan’s turn as the dimmest on the island, the policeman’s abused son Dominic. This kid has shown up in so many films lately, turning in deft character turns that are downright lapidarian. Like Farrell, Gleeson, and Condon, there is no sign of technique here; there is just Dominic who on the one hand, makes Padraic look like Einstein but who may have a greater sense of his limitations in the world and therefore, more self-awareness. Indeed, there is a point at which, after Padraic has confided in Dominic having pulled an awful deception on a student of Colm’s, that Dominic calls Padraic out on it. He thought Padraic was different from the rest of the islanders but it clearly is not. 

Thematically, there is so much to extract from all of this and much of it is worth considering but the film is such a rich experience, I really don’t want to write it to death. Still, the layers beneath the surfaces of each character amplify the richness and depth of the whole structure and goddamn if everyone doesn’t nail it. 

There are some lovely and often funny grace notes, like the priest who asks Colm “how’s the despair?” at every confession. (After an altercation where Colm decks the town’s cop, and after Colm has confessed only to having accidentally killed Padraic’s miniature donkey, the priest asks if that’s all he has to confess; how about punching the cop? To which Colm replies: “If punching a policeman is a sin, then we may as well pack it in and go home.”) In fact, some of the funniest exchanges are with the priest. “How dare you ask me if I think about being with men…I’m a man of the cloth!”

There is also Sheila Flitton who plays the very odd Mrs. McCormick, a crone of a woman who Siobhan avoids regularly but eventually gives into inviting to her and Padraic’s home. Most people seem to avoid her and she may or may not be merely eccentric but given her understanding of portents, one suspects there is more to her. She is a storied stage actress from Cork and filmgoers would likely remember her from “The Commitments” and more recently as Lyudmilla in “The Northman”. Here, McDonagh has given her a meatier role and one she inhabits with just the right mix of humor and a disconcerting eccentricity. 

There is so much to drone on about, but I reiterate that this is a film best seen and talked about it with friends. I will add that two other elements render this a work of true beauty, literally: Ben Davis’s cinematography has never been better and I want to pause here to take stock of his portfolio: let’s start with his work with Matthew Vaughn; “Layer Cake”, “Stardust”, “Kick-Ass”, move onto his work in the MCU (“Capt. Marvel”, “Dr. Strange”, “Guardians of the Galaxy”, “Avengers: Age of Ultron”, “Eternals”), John Madden’s “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” and “The Debt” and his prior work with McDonah, “Seven Psychopaths” and “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”. My point is that his work is varied and if you’ve seen any of these films, supports the narratives and amplifies them by creating compositions that give the characters room to breathe and be. (Think of Daniel Craig folding into a fetal position from a gods-eye overhead shot in “Layer Cake” to Hit-Girl’s and Big Daddy’s acts of mayhem in “Kick-Ass” to some of the quieter moments in “Eternals” and the more mind-bending excursions in “Dr. Strange”. There is more of stillness and groundedness here that serves as a foundation for some of the more disconcerting aspects of what happens between Colm and Padraic.

Okay. I want do want to return to this film at greater length; however, I’ll wait awhile. The measures Colm takes to get Padraic to leave him alone are extreme and seem self-defeating, but that is, in many ways, the point. Again, I’ll just leave this here for now and will return in a few days or weeks with a second part.

Colm is a musician and there are traditional tunes played a-plenty here. “The Banshees of Inishiren” is the piece composed by Colm that he is working on when he cuts Padraic out of his life. It is, moreover, a composition by Brendan Gleeson and it’s a keeper. I was impressed to see that Gleeson played on many of the traditional tunes featured in the film but/and I was floored when I saw that the composer for the film’s soundtrack was none other than Carter Burwell. 

It’s ludicrous and sets the mind spinning when you play over in your mind his scores for films by the Coen Brothers (going back to “Blood Simple”; their and his first film), Charlie Kaufman, Todd Haynes, Spike Jonze, and of course, Martin McDonagh. He may have outdone himself here, where the orchestration just feels like part of the landscape. It’s impossible to separate the visual from the aural environment conjured by the arrangements.

I could and later, will, go on about this film. It deserves more, but for now, I just want to put it out there to get on people’s radar. It should be seen on the big screen because, intimate though the movie is, the depth and resonance of the emotional beats in the film should be experienced on a larger canvas. 

Click here for my Oscar Post-Mortem.