Movie review: The Banshees of Inisherin
TL;DR: The Banshees of Inisherin is a warm movie which explores the volcanic fire of the life defining fork in the road of the familiar vs the unknown.
I read this won best film at the Golden Globes. I knew nothing else about it other than Colin Farrell was in it who I generally like.
The movie is about the struggle of whether to stay with the familiar in life. It’s done in the context of a town so small that I actually felt claustrophobia at times. It was as if there was no escaping any of it because they all saw and knew each other.
The script and movie roll out like a comfortable blanket with thorns.
It’s somehow both overt and subtle. There are scenes devoted to a character walking a road from home to the pub etc.
It felt freeing as it gave me some time to consider how the story was playing out.
The plotline centers on a broken friendship revealed very early in the movie.
Colin Farrell (Padraic) and Brendan Gleason (Colm), who as also the Sheriff in Gangs of New York) were long time friends who visited the pub daily. One day Colm no longer wants to go or be friends because he realized Padraic was in his words “boring”.
Farrell and Gleason were fabulous in In Bruges in which they have a natural chemistry which continues here.
The entire arc with all of the sub-stories is powerful. It’s a study in the friction between keeping things as they are and growing and/or moving on.
Colm is distressed and inspired that he hasn’t really explored life, the arts, risk taking, etc. Padraic doesn’t fit.
It’s so evocative as they both struggle with it, each pulling their own way. Padraic yearns for kindness, Colm yearns for freedom.
As the movie progresses Padraic keeps trying and without spoiling it Colm gets increasingly strident about ending the friendship (including a pretty gnarly act).
Padraic gets increasingly desperate to change that. The more he tries the worse it gets.
I’ve never seen a movie where eyebrows could be so expressive. I’m not sure if they were his but Farrell uses his eyebrows to communicate a range of emotions I’ve never seen before.
In contrast Gleason is almost non plussed by his certainty that he was doing the right thing and his expressions and body showed it.
Their conflict culminates with a series of events that are brilliant and painful. It’s puts SO much of the movie together that I almost couldn’t keep up, despite the comfortable pace of the movie.
Two other characters were quite compelling (aside from Jenny the donkey):
Padraic’s sister Siobhan, played by Kerry Condon (who is in a bunch of stuff I’ve seen but I don’t remember her) is fabulous. She is compelling as a straight talking, reliable woman who is emotionally cut deeply by an unexpected source in the movie.
It puts her square in the face of a similar decision to stay the same or move out and on. Her chemistry with Farrell is special.
Dominic (played by Barry Keoghan) is a disabled in some way friend who is also a straight talking character refusing to not say what he thought. His arc of staying the same vs changing is unexpected at a minimum. His father is physically abusive with disastrous consequences.
When the Dad realizes it, again the script and movie is both subtle and powerfully overt.
This small town lives safely distant from an ongoing war which is a perfect analogy for what the characters seem to struggle with.
For anyone reading this who, like me, is in the struggle of doing the familiar vs the meaningful, with its attendant risks, this film will get to your heart and soul.
The movie’s portrayal of the difficulty of that outer conflict expressed my inner conflict.
Given these last few points the magnificence of the movie’s beauty is rooted in both the script and the on screen chemistry between Gleason and Farrell.
The gentle pace of the script and the beauty of the landscape leverages that chemistry in a deep and impactful way.
It’s fascinating and meaningful to me that the film will not have a sequel but its impact on me will go far beyond the movie.
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