BEFORE: OK, we're a few days past St. Patrick's Day now, but this was originally my first pick for the film to land on that holiday, and then it just didn't work out that way. Something similar happened last year around Memorial Day when I was trying to land "Dog" right on the holiday, but then settled on "Top Gun: Maverick" instead - this is why grouping films by subject matter helps me out, because if things don't work out like I intended, well then there's always a back-up plan, and I can skip a day or double up if I really need the chain to line up with a holiday.
Jon Kenny carries over from "Wolfwalkers".
THE PLOT: Two lifelong friends find themselves at an impasse when one abruptly ends their relationship, with alarming consequences for both of them.
AFTER: See, the chain knows what needs to happen - sure, this film is set in Ireland, but is it the MOST IRISH film I could possibly watch? Well, I guess that's debatable. "The Secret of Kells" was very, very Irish, so I stand by my decision to change things up. Sometimes the chain just doesn't FEEL quite right, but it still feels close. Sometimes my busy schedule or a weekend road trip will pop up and throw my plans a bit out of whack, but see, it's all for the best. Four Irish films in a row this week, and I'm saving the fifth one for Easter Sunday, and I get to riff a bit on other topics between now and then. It's fine.
Maybe to understand Ireland, I can do that by taking a closer look at the characters here - they really promoted the hell out of this one last year during Oscar season, they did so many Academy screenings in the NYC area, I saw all the e-mails pimping for Barry Keoghan AND Colin Farrell AND Brendan Gleeson AND Kerry Condon, and so it did get four acting nominations, and nine Oscar noms overall, but then it didn't win even one. Not even editing or Best Original Screenplay, or even Original Score. It makes you wonder if nominating two people for Best Supporting Actor from the same film just ends up splitting the votes, which is what maybe enabled Ke Huy Quan to win for "Everything Everywhere All at Once" - I mean, he was great, too, but was he OSCAR-winning great? Or did he just win because he was in the movie that got the most attention? We'll never know, it's impossible to know what all the Academy voters were thinking. Kerry Condon lost to Jamie Lee Curtis, of course, and Brendan Gleeson lost to Brendan Fraser from "The Whale". Also, there were TEN films nominated for Best Picture, so the chances of winning that were reduced mathematically, and now after tonight I've seen EIGHT of those ten, so yay me - I just have not seen "All Quiet on the Western Front" and "The Fabelmans" yet. Which reminds me, I should probably go through all of last year's and this year's nominees to make sure they're on my watch list, now that I've seen "Babylon" and "Tar" and "Puss in Boots: The Last Wish".
But I digress - this "Banshees of Inisherin" is a very dark film, set in Ireland in the 1920's or thereabouts, it's about a group of people who live on this rather isolated island, and some of them are pretty morose, but especially these two lifelong friends who go through a crisis when one, Colm, decides he doesn't want to be friends with the other one, Padraic, any more. It seems Colm's decided to devote the rest of his life to composing music, and this friend of his tends to ramble on for hours about nothing really important, and so he doesn't want to waste any more of his time listening to pointless stories. Oh, if only it were that easy - Padraic doesn't want to give up on the friendship easily, so he keeps pestering to Colm, asking him WHY, what has he done to cause this break-up, how can he make it right again? And persisting in this line of questioning really just makes things worse, the way he continues on and is unable to let go is representative of the underlying problem, namely that this guy just can't seem to shut up.
Nobody likes break-ups, either with a friend or a romantic partner or an employer - we all have a sense of self-worth, ideally, and nobody wants to believe that they're part of the relationship problem, because we tend to see things the way we want to see them. We all want to think of ourselves as fun, interesting people with a library of great stories to tell, and we're all very fun and entertaining at parties and therefore, we all deserve to love and be loved and network our way to fame and fortune. Well, we can't all be right about that, can we? Some people are NOT fun and in fact are quite annoying, are terrible at telling stories and livening up parties, and most of us will never be famous or rich, or at least not both at the same time, but we're just too close to the problem to really be aware of it. That seems like it could be quite common.
So yeah, maybe Colm is just getting old and crotchety - but maybe Padraic really IS that annoying and unaware of it. Our impressions of him come from what we see in the film, so we don't really know how boring or stupid his conversations were before that, all we know is that Colm has heard enough of them to be done. I guess I can see that - maybe we all know somebody like that, only we don't feel courageous enough to either let that person know that they're not great conversationalists, and maybe we don't feel sure of ourselves to cut that person out of our lives and let them go bother someone else for a while, maybe we're all guilty of being too polite in this regard, because as a result the bad conversationalists may NEVER find out their true nature, and thus never be encouraged to change.
Anyway, Colm breaks off the friendship, whether the reasons he gives are true or valid or a good thing or a bad thing isn't really the point - I guess the point is that Padraic can't let things stand, so he keeps coming around and trying to make up with Colm, and it's exactly the wrong thing to do - he should have just walked away or moved to another town and rebooted himself, it would probably be easier to burn down his life and try to start over somewhere else. Which is what his sister Siobhan wants to do for her own life, leave the island and work in a library on the mainland. Watching her brother go through this friendship break-up and not handle it in the best way only makes her more anxious to get out of town. Meanwhile Padraic spends more time with his miniature donkey, now that he can't go to the pub with his best mate.
Things get so bad that Colm threatens to cut off one of his own fingers each time Padraic comes around to try and mend the relationship, he's that serious about wanting his former friend to stay away. This sure seems like an idle threat at first, I mean, Colm is a fiddle player, how is he going to play his fiddle with one less finger? So sure, what's the harm in taking one more crack at getting back together with his chum? So, yeah, Padraic was that persistent and perhaps that stupid. I kept thinking this finger thing was all just going to be a metaphor for something else, like when I got divorced I likened the procedure of separation to an animal caught in a trap, and I had to ask myself if I was willing to give up an arm or a leg to be free again, at least that's what it felt like at the time.
There are other stories going on in this island town, but it was hard for me to make much sense of them, well, it's a depiction of another world during another time, so I suppose some things might be a bit hard to understand. There's Dominic, the son of the local policeman, who got beaten by his father for drinking his alcohol. Padraic and his sister Siobhan take him in for a night, and this only leads to Dominic making a weird pass at Siobhan, and Padraic getting punched out by Dominic's father after bringing his abusive nature to light. There's also a priest who seems to use all the information he learns in the confessional as gossip to spread around, and then there's Mrs. McCormack, who just seems to stand in the road most of the time wearing a big flowing dress and looking like a scary banshee or something. Meanwhile the relationship between Colm and Padraic escalates into a full-fledged feud, and it doesn't seem like it's going to end well.
Actually nobody's story feels like it's going to end well, which is a narrative choice I suppose, and I'm not saying it's wrong, because in real life everyone's story is NOT going to end well, if you think about it. We're all getting older and we're all circling the drain and none of us know how much time we've got left on God's green earth, after all. So you can just surrender and be miserable all the time, or you can try to focus on being productive and doing the things you're good at and also a few things which bring you joy. That would honestly be the best that you can do, given the circumstances, and I think I see that now.
Also starring Colin Farrell (last seen in "Artemis Fowl"), Brendan Gleeson (last heard in "Song of the Sea"), Pat Shortt (ditto), Kerry Condon (last seen in "Dom Hemingway"), Barry Keoghan (last seen in "The Green Knight"), Gary Lydon (last seen in "Brooklyn"), Sheila Flitton (last seen in "The Northman"), David Pearse (last seen in "Laws of Attraction"), Brid Ni Neachtain, Aaron Monaghan (last seen in "Assassin's Creed'), Lasairfhiona Ni Chonaola.
RATING: 6 out of 10 well, Colm's fingers, obviously
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