The Banshees of Inisherin is a black comedy
Martin McDonagh, an acclaimed Irish filmmaker, and playwright wrote The Banshees of Inisherin, his fourth feature film after In Bruges, Seven Psychopaths, and Three Billboards...
One of the most anticipated films this year had its world premiere at the Venice festival on October 5th, where Colin Ferrell won in the major actor category, while McDonagh won for the writing. Searchlight Pictures premiered the film in theaters on October 21st, and it is a top contender for Best Picture at the 2018 Academy Awards.
The film takes place in 1923, near the end of the Irish Civil War, on the fictional Irish island of Inisherin. We observe at the start how musician Colm Doherty (Brendan Gleeson) abruptly begins to disregard his long-time buddy Pedrick Suliban ( Colin Ferrell ). Pedrick is a likable character who is too boring for Colm, who wants to spend the rest of his life writing music and doing things that will make him famous.
Colm becomes increasingly resistant to his old friend's attempts to communicate with him while Pedrick becomes increasingly agitated at the rejection, culminating in Colm's ultimatum - every time Pedrick tries to talk to him, he would cut off his own finger with sheep shears.
This film is a black comedy about two friends who fall out, a drama about life on a small, secluded island, and an allegory about Ireland's wartime woes. While the storyline explores universal themes, the film's core is about the tenacity and all-encompassing nature of loneliness, and the extent the main protagonists would go to attain their very contradictory desires. It's both humorous and devastating because everything we see is both ludicrous and horribly honest, and the story's setting is both wonderful and beautifully simple.
The script expands and unveils a whole isolated universe of weirdness, conflict, past suffering, present misery, and the future from that direct, enigmatic, and poignant phrase. The author begins the film with an aerial image of the stunning scenery that serves as a backdrop to the personal drama and comedy centered on the people of this story - the camera never loses sight of those lonely, wounded individuals amid the wide emptiness of their stone-walled home. Only later, when the filmmakers' bigger worries about the nature and inevitability of conflict emerge, do those immense labyrinths of stone walls harken back to the island's actual divisions as old as those buildings.
The Banshees of Inisherin is a sophisticated tragicomedy about friendship, alienation, loneliness, and mortality with stunning performances and deep emotions that arrives in stillness.
Post by Bryan C.
