The Banshees of Inisherin
Year: 2022
Rating: R
Length: 114 minutes / 1.90 hours
After the masterpiece that was Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), I was ready for the next film from Martin McDonagh. I appreciated the dark sense of humor he had in Seven Psychopaths (2012) and I understood his bizarre fascination with “boring” from In Bruges (2008), but for some reason, The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) didn’t quite hit for me. It’s likely because the premise is a metaphor for something I don’t entirely understand. On a second watch, I did laugh at the jokes more and I always thought the setting was pretty, but it still didn’t click.
Going in without completely understanding what this movie was about, it immediately struck me how stupid the prime conflict is. It felt like Colm (Brendan Gleeson) took far too long to admit why he didn’t want to be friends with Pádraic (Colin Ferrell) anymore, and his reason was quite stupid. I can’t stand the “conflict because the characters don’t communicate” trope, which was only compounded by his reason being that Pádraic was boring. That he “cut off his nose to spite his face” to get his point across just felt insane.
Now, after watching this movie for the first time, others informed me that this was a metaphor for the Irish civil war. Having little to no knowledge of Irish history, I would think that the whole conflict was stupid if it was based on the conflict between Colm and Pádraic. Of course, maybe that’s the point. War is stupid, but instead of just showing the ugly side of this stupidity like in All Quiet on the Western Front (1930 or 2022), it pokes at the irrational nature of the conflict. Still, for McDonagh’s first foray into the historical genre, Banshees retains his humor and penchant for shocking violence.
A metaphor via Irishmen who can’t properly communicate with each other, I give The Banshees of Inisherin 3.0 stars out of 5.
