Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and In Bruges writer-director Martin McDonagh reunites Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell in this deliriously melancholy tale set in remotest 1920s Ireland.
The Banshees of Inisherin is a comedy of mortification as well as exasperation. The film begins with a beautiful overhead shot of the title Irish island, all green below a clear blue sky (in this picture it only rains at night, which, considering actual weather patterns in Ireland, places the film in yet another genre, that of fantasy).
Every day at 2 pm, dairy farmer Pádraic (Colin Farrell) calls on his best friend Colm (Brendan Gleeson), and the two head to the pub. They’re a chalk-and-cheese pair: the former a simple soul who can talk for hours about horse poo; the latter “a thinker” who writes music, plays the fiddle and falls prey to bouts of existential despair. Circumstance has made them inseparable.
One day, Colm unexpectedly tells Pádraic he no longer wants to speak to him. A nice little domestic story of strife and reconciliation, right? Wrong.
There are amputations and deaths! To prove he’s not bluffing, Colm tells Pádraic that every time he utters a word to him, he’ll cut off one of his own fingers.
Over the course of several discussions, we learn that Colm has come to find Pádraic dull (and the earnest fellow’s conversation is indeed limited, if amiable), and that he believes he’s got better things to do with his time, such as composing songs on his fiddle.
When Colm goes to confession at the island’s church, he reveals he’s also suffering from despair. He’s suffering from quite a bit more than that.
Nobody does self-loathing like the Irish, and with this film, McDonagh is in much more familiar territory than when he was trying to tell America a thing or two with his film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri in 2017.
Farrell gives what may be his strongest performance yet in The Banshees of Inisherin. One of the reasons he’s so good in it is that he’s playing a character who, perhaps like Farrell himself, is used to being underestimated.
There are a million terrific little quirks in the film. Colm and an aggressive priest nearly come to blows in the confessional; one townsperson is an old woman who looks like a witch and predicts the future like a soothsayer; we learn that bread trucks are leading causes of fatality in Ireland.
You won’t find a funnier movie this year.
The Banshees of Inisherin, rated 14A, plays at the Patricia Theatre from December 2 to 8 at 7 pm, and on Thursday December 8, at 1:30 pm. Running time is one hour and 54 minutes.
Gary Shilling is executive director of qathet Film Society (formerly Powell River Film Society).
