In the opening moments of The Banshees of Inisherin, we follow Pádraic Súilleabháin (Colin Farrell) making his way to his friend’s home to invite him to the pub as if it’s the most normal, routine thing in the world. His friend’s refusal then immediately comes to feel like an existential threat to that world, planting us in a story about the very nature of friendship and the unspoken dynamics behind every type of relationship.
Banshees sees director Martin McDonagh reunited with his In Bruges stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson and spends much of its time relishing in the same snippy banter that film thrived on. But this film is not about bored hitmen killing time, it is instead set on a remote island off the coast of Ireland, during the Civil War of the early 1920s. Here, conversation is not a meaningless distraction, it is all our leads have and the denial of that is a spanner in the works that throws Pádraic’s whole life out of order.
Despite the film’s setting, this central fear of a relationship being more disposable than you had assumed is a timeless one, it’s not so far from the modern idea of ghosting and the idea of friendships as transactional or useless is incredibly en vogue right now. What this story achieves is a way of talking about universal fears around friendship; that we can’t know what someone is truly thinking, that we cannot know how much someone values our presence, and fundamentally that we don’t know if they will last forever, and transposes them onto a context where they are the baseline emotional logic. Much of the first act of the film is spent with Pádraic agonising over why his friend Colm (Gleeson) could conceivably no longer want to speak with him and the film is incredibly smart in refusing to offer some grand answer to this question, propelling the story into a new angle exploring loneliness without artificially expanding the stakes.
In contrast to the film’s idea of friendship, it also presents other kinds of relationships; the unique solidarity between siblings, the unconditional love one has for a pet, the possessive cruelty of an abusive father and many more subtle examples. The purpose of this is not to downplay the importance of our central dynamic, but to use it as a lens through which we can ask the same questions of each of these relationships and the result is a rich tapestry that presents an incredibly nuanced and intelligent idea of human relationships while also telling a compelling story about this small community.
Driving the entire film is Colin Farrell, whose performance runs the gamut from wounded puppy, to scorned loner. His heartbroken frowns in the film’s early minutes sell us on the tragedy of Colm Doherty’s rejection before anything else needs to but he also offers a charm as comical and lacking in ego as any before. As important to the film’s success is a world weary Brendan Gleeson, weighed down by a quiet guilt that will at the very least make you understand where he’s coming from if not encourage you to ignore Colin Farrell yourself. The cast is rounded out by a quietly great Kerry Condon as Pádraic’s sister Siobhán, cursed with bearing witness to the two men’s bickering, and Barry Keoghan as an expectedly strange young man whose dynamic with Pádraic is a fascinating wrinkle to the film’s story as he in effect represents to him everything Pádraic does to Colm.
Though the film is ultimately a drama, it is every bit as funny as one would expect with a script that smartly understands how the two can coexist in any given moment. This is complemented by direction that offers a quietly soulful feeling, with McDonagh often leaning all the way into the mystical. It’s a curious approach that balances the specificity of its setting with the universality of its story. Outside of language, there is a general sense of erring away from the texture expected of this moment in time, with the war only ever painting the back of its frames and our characters not engaging in any kind of work. This isn’t a flaw but it’s an approach that might alienate some people as much as it brought me closer to the story.
The Banshees of Inisherin is a deceptively simple story that succeeds due to the patience with which it explores every corner of its setup, presenting a window into a world that both feels real and like a mirror of countless aspects of an audience’s own life. Its closing moments are seeped in loneliness but the film also offers a sense of recognition that makes it hard to feel like you’re leaving totally alone.
