THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN (2022) ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
D: Martin McDonagh
Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon,
Barry Keoghan, Pat Shortt, David Pearse
This all takes place in 1923 on an island off the Irish coast. The Civil War's going on, and from the island you can hear the gunshots and see the smoke from the explosions across the water. The island is a place of suffocating closeness, the sort of place where there are no secrets and everybody knows everybody else way too well. Two of those islanders are Padraic (Colin Farrell) and Colm (Brendan Gleeson), old friends who meet up most afternoons to walk down to the pub and drink a pint together. Then one day, out of nowhere, Colm tells Padraic he doesn't like him anymore and wants nothing to do with him. Padraic is crushed. Colm is adamant. And the movie proceeds from there. There's no easy sentiment in Martin McDonagh's script, but a lot of emotional depth, and it's brilliantly acted by everybody, with especially fine work by Farrell as the "dull" but good-natured Padraic and Barry Keoghan as an abused (and damaged) kid named Dominic, who's more perceptive than he first appears. In a scene late in the film, Dominic and Padraic's sister Siobhan (Kerry Condon) are standing together looking out at the lake when Dominic, twisting himself into physical and emotional knots, works up the courage to ask Siobhan if she'd like to be something more than just neighbors and friends. She tells him no in the nicest way possible, and he tries to shrug it off, but there's no hiding the fact that he's devastated. The exchange is as achingly honest as it is inevitable, and the whole movie's like that. It cuts to the bone.
