Film Review: The Banshees of Inisherin – 9/10

‘I am not putting me donkey outside when I’m sad, okay?

Life can feel mundane sometimes. Same boring job. Same mundane pub. Same old conversations. But hopefully, for some of us, there is comfort in routine. I go to the same pub every two weeks or so with the same person and I love it as dearly now as I did the first time we shared a pint together. The Banshees of Inisherin imagines what would happen if one day I woke up and it wasn’t enough for me anymore, or perhaps more pertinently, it wasn’t enough for my companion…

Pádraic Súilleabháin (Colin Farrell) is a simple man. He cares for his animals. He loves his sister Siobhan (Kerry Condon). And at 2 pm every day he calls for his best friend Colm Doherty (Brendan Gleeson) and the two of them go to the pub together. One day, Colm decides that he doesn’t want to be friends with Padraic anymore. To the extent that he threatens to cut his own fingers off should Padraic ever darken his door again. Elsewhere, Barry Keoghan plays a village idiot-type character who is both tragic and hilarious in equal measure.

The Inisherin of the title is the name dreamed up by writer-director Martin McDonagh for the fictional island upon which the whole film takes place. It was actually filmed on location with various Irish islands standing in for Inisherin. The result is a gorgeous-looking film in which every other shot is breathtakingly beautiful. The characters that reside on the island seem to be oblivious to the beauty around them, instead being content to live out humdrum lives of no consequence. Apart from Colm that is. Nobody plays contemplative better than Gleeson, and McDonagh uses Colm as an expression of the ever-looming fear that there is more to life than this. There has to be. Colm concludes that the arts and creating a legacy are what give life meaning. For Padraic, simply having the love of your family and friends is enough. McDonagh doesn’t choose sides either way, instead allowing the viewer to reach their own conclusion. For me, this is something I grapple with on a daily basis. You wouldn’t be reading these words if I didn’t nurture a deep desire to create something of worth (and for that, I can only apologise).

The Banshees of Inisherin also ponders the meaning of male friendships and loneliness. Were Padraic and Colm ever actually friends? What does friendship mean? Admittedly, McDonagh provides more in the way of questions than answers, but this affords his latest film timelessness and poignancy rarely seen in modern-day cinema. I came away from this film changed, or if not changed then at least open to some kind of change of perception, and that is, after all, about as much as art can hope to achieve. In that respect, this film recalls Manchester by the Sea – another film that some doubtless found frustrating that I absolutely adored.

With his latest film, McDonagh has eclipsed all of his earlier work, great though it is, to create something of real resonance. This could well be the Best Picture of 2022. Let’s see what the Academy says in March.