The Banshees Of Inisherin - Movie Review

Critics Score - 8 of 10

General Audience Score - 7 of 10

Although I’ve never been to Ireland, I hear it’s a beautiful country, it certainly looks gorgeous from what I’ve seen and I’d love to visit someday. The country has a colorful history of turmoil and war scarring some parts of the nation when it claimed independence from Great Britain back in the 1920’s. A new film from Martin McDonagh called The Banshees Of Inisherin takes place in Ireland during that decade. McDonagh teams back up with Colin Ferrell and Brendan Gleeson for his latest story of two men that were friends and drinking buddies but their relationship takes a turn for the worse. Despite the film’s regular use of humor, it straddles the line of light and darkness, with some quite gruesome events and a somber tone, especially leading up to the finale. Although I had high expectations for Banshees, the film didn’t quite coalesce into one of the year’s best films as I’d hoped and expected. There’s a thought provoking and evocative film here to be sure, one that I’m looking forward to revisiting to see if it may improve upon further inspection. I’m not ready to call an exorcist, but I’m definitely a bit haunted by The Banshees, the ones from the island of Inisherin.

SYNOPSIS - This feckin story starts just a little ways off the shores of western Ireland, on the small island on Inisherin, where only a handful of people live. We see beautiful green landscapes, the stone walls jutting up and giving parts of the land the look of some kind of symmetrical labyrinth. All the while a chorus of angelic voices sings a harmonious song with no words. We meet our protagonist Pádraic (Colin Farrell) as he walks through a small village with wagons, a small building made of gray stone, he passes a statue of the Virgin Mary as the choir voices rise, giving the sense of peace and calm in this small, quiet village. He continues on down a gray path amid the green backdrop until he comes to a white house with a red door and windows. After knocking a moment, he walks around and looks in to see his friend, Colm Doherty (Brendan Gleeson), sitting alone in the room and smoking. He shouts, “Colm! Are you coming up to the pub, Colm?” But he sits there, in the middle of the room, unflinching, as his bewildered friend yells, “It’s two o’clock then!” The camera switches to inside the house and we watch as Colm, staring straight ahead, inhales on his cigarette, and then slowly breathes smoke out through the small amount of light struggling in from the window. Gleeson is a delight as a disgruntled and depressed old man going through some sort of delayed mid-life crisis as he searches for some meaning in his existence, but he’s complemented by some truly impressive work from Farrell, who along with After Yang and The Batman, is having a banner year.

Pádraic departs confused, but after going home and telling his sister Siobhan (Kerry Condon), who’s bright red jacket makes her stand out from the rest of the cast, she jokingly offers with a smile, “maybe he just doesn’t like ya no more?”. He walks down to the pub where the two friends normally have a drink together and speaks to the barkeeper who asks if they’ve been “rowing” or having an argument or feud to which he replies that they haven’t. Pádraic’s confusion about the whole situation continues as he finally returns to Colm’s house to ask what the problem seems to be. This is about the point in the first act when McDonagh’s screenplay wisely begins to layer the humor on fairly thick, he has some good sensibilities about these characters and this story. He steadily weaves the laughs into the story through the first two acts in a way that holds the viewer’s interest and the slower pacing of the story doesn’t suffer for the duration of the almost two hour runtime. But once the real drama of the story kicks into high gear later into the second act, the film leaves most of the hilarity behind but gains some real momentum through to the finale. Without spoiling anything, Pádraic and Colm’s relationship dynamics are the beating heart of the film, they continually fluctuate through the course of the runtime and draw viewers in, like a moth to the flame.

The acting is top notch, Farrell may pick up enough traction to not only land a Best Actor nomination, but garner him a win. Though who really surprised me was Barry Keoghan, he’s really impressive as a dim-witted neighbor boy who has a thing for Kerry Condon’s character. Despite the film’s riveting nature, the film never coalesced into something more for me and left me a bit underwhelmed by the ending. I kept expecting a haymaker end to propel the film into my top 10 of the year, but it never came. But the direction and screenplay from McDonagh are both top notch, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Academy Awards consider him for both aspects of Banshees. The editing and overall pacing the film was able to accomplish on such a simple story was quite remarkable, again, some of this I attribute to the liberal use of humor. Tonally the film pulls a hard left moving into the third act. The film sobers up and this humorous tale of two feuding friends goes dark, but the film’s visuals and sound assist in this transition to the dour. The cinematography and beautiful color palette of warm and earthy colors, the dark green and gray aesthetics assist in the dreary direction the film eventually heads in. Also the original score impressed me a lot, it’s delicate chimes and subtle notes worked remarkably well at drawing us in during the comedic moments and pushing us closer to the edge of our seats when it’s building up tension. Despite the excellent momentum the film picks up and builds as if we’re headed towards some epic finale or bigger message about life’s meaning, friendship or one’s purpose, it didn’t pay off completely by the end, but Banshees is bound to strike some audiences differently than others.

SUMMARY - The excellent performances, great use of comedy and tone in the film are with the best of them, but these pieces just don’t come together enough to redeem this downer of a film completely. These wailing Banshees are a powerful force though, even if it’s not a truly great film, it’s well worth most general audience and cinephile’s time to visit The small island Of Inisherin.