Spirited
Lightning indeed strikes twice for McDonagh, Farrell and Gleeson, and we can’t wait for #3.
The BAnshees of INisherin
Director: Martin McDonagh • Writer: Martin McDonagh
Starring: Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon, Barry Keoghan, Gary Lydon, Pat Shortt, Sheila Flitton
Ireland / UK / USA • 1hr 54mins
Opens Hong Kong January 26 • IIB
Grade: A
When playwright Martin McDonagh made his filmmaking debut in 2008 with In Bruges, no one would have guessed it would be the beginning of a beautiful friendship, as Bogart would say. But the alchemy at play among McDonagh and actors Colin Farrell (on a similar note, did we guess Farrell would have come so far from his bad boy pin-up roots?) and veteran Brendan Gleeson (Domhnall’s dad) is undeniable. The pair of them made the alternately bungling or reluctant hitmen of In Bruges as tragic as they were funny, so it’s no surprise they’ve managed to mine McDonagh’s screenplay for The Banshees of Inisherin – a freshly anointed Oscar nominee, the first of nine – for maximum tragicomic absurdism and genuine melancholy.
The Best Picture contender (that’s two) is a modest dramedy, one that revels in the little details and demands you pay attention; one that’s loaded with low-key humour and sudden bursts of intimate violence that are just as funny – even if you’re laughing nervously. The stagey story pivots on two pals, Pádraic (Farrell, three) and Colm (Gleeson, four), living on the fictional island of Inisherin at the end of the Irish Civil War in 1923. Pádraic tends his dairy cows, musician Colm works on what he hopes will be a lasting violin composition, and they meet each day at the pub. That routine is disrupted when Colm suddenly decides he doesn’t like Pádraic anymore. Friendship over. This is the beginning of the story.
Can you tell who directed?
It’s an admittedly ridiculous idea that works thanks to Farrell and Gleeson’s total mastery over McDonagh’s startlingly composed dialogue. The Banshees of Inisherin sings because while it’s being abjectly hilarious, the hilarity carries a sombre, woundedness that gets sadder the funnier it gets – or maybe vice versa. After Colm lays down the law – Pádraic is not to speak to him, and if he does Colm will cut off one of his own fingers – Pádraic’s utter bafflement (often seen through Farrell’s amazing eyebrows) leads to inevitable tragedy upon inevitable tragedy. But. It’s kind of funny. McDonagh is one of the few writer-directors (five) currently working who could pull this off. Seven Psychopaths (2012) was more straight-ahead comedy (though Sam Rockwell is a fine Farrell stand-in), and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (Rockwell again, this time winning an Oscar) was more straight drama. The Banshees of Inisherin gets the balance right.
But McDonagh doesn’t leave it there. Pádraic and Colm’s feud trickles down to other islanders, like Pádraic’s sister Siobhán (Kerry Condon, six), who tries to run interference and convince her brother to leave well enough alone. Then there’s the abused, village idiot son of the police chief Pádraic decides to hang out with, Dominic (Barry Keoghan, seven). He’s not quite the idiot people think he is, and isn’t even close to secretly in love with Siobhán.
The best way to experience The Banshees of Inisherin’s examination of fracturing friendship and singular elegiac tone is to just sit down and let it wash over you. The film’s themes of severing relations that are never truly severed, regret, stagnation and mortality unfold against a gorgeous blustery Irish landscape captured by DOP Ben Davis (robbed!), and give all the players a roomy stage. As Pádraic, Farrell is heartbreaking in his lonely isolation, crushed at losing his only friend (except for his donkey Jenny), and as an actor he’s rarely been such an open book. Of course, he needs Gleeson’s gruffness to bounce off, and his rising intractability brings Colm’s own fixation on his anonymity into relief. How much you want to read into the gunfire in the background is up to you, but Inisherin has plenty to chew on without a historical allegory.
And that’s the thing. Inisherin is easily one of the densest films to come down the pipe in a while, which is not to say it’s inaccessible. Far from it, it’s a rich and rewarding watch, that for all its pitch black comedy and amusing “island characters” is an affecting treatise on the passage of time and the inescapability of sorrow (for the record, Fargo composer Carter Burwell’s score and Mikkel EG Nielsen’s editing round out the Oscar noms). Now, if they could just somehow get Rockwell into the mix for #3. — DEK