The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
Directed by Martin McDonagh
Two lifelong friends find themselves at an impasse when one abruptly ends their relationship, with alarming consequences for both of them.
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6 films that influenced The Banshees of Inisherin
What critics say influenced The Banshees of Inisherin
As for the iconography, it’s hard not to think of the idealised roistering of John Ford’s The Quiet Man , with Condon’s brightly-clad, red-haired character forthrightly channelling the spirit of Maureen O’Hara as the lonesome, literary, eminently sane Siobhan.
The film starts out feeling almost like a sequel to John Ford’s “The Quiet Man.”
The hokeyness masking a darker underbelly in Inisherin also appears influenced by John Ford’s The Quiet Man , in which the innocence of rural Ireland is contrasted with an ex-boxer’s Chicago past, and then subverted.
As implacably played by Sheila Flitton, she’s a pipe-smoking version of Death, in “The Seventh Seal” (1957).
Just as Sheila Flitton’s crone-like neighbour Mrs McCormick comes increasingly to resemble Bengt Ekerot’s embodiment of Death in Bergman’s The Seventh Seal , so McDonagh’s acerbic dialogue circles the subject of impending obliteration in tragicomic fashion.
There’s a plethora of Irish “types”: the chatty pub keeper, the omen-spouting old lady who looks like Death in “The Seventh Seal,” the small-town copper who sheathes his brutality in brisk protocol, the village idiot.
A black-hooded, harbinger-of-death-type old woman character seems pulled straight from The Seventh Seal.
Unfolding like a gleefully sadistic mirror image of the scene in “Good Will Hunting” when Ben Affleck tells Matt Damon about the best part of his day — one friend encouraging the other to leave their go-nowhere life behind — “The Banshees of Inisherin” watches as Colm’s decision ripples across the kind of small community where conflict tends to be swallowed like communion, and cruelty is only exercised behind closed doors.
The Banshees of Inisherin is a return to familiar territory for writer-director Martin McDonagh: It plays like a spiritual sequel to his pitch-black 2008 comedy-thriller In Bruges .
In 2008, Irish playwright Martin McDonagh ( The Lonesome West ) made his feature-film debut with In Bruges , pairing actors Colin Farrell ( Widows ) and Brendan Gleeson ( The Tragedy of Macbeth ) together in what proved to be a winning combination.
Perhaps the difference is that Banshees—much like McDonagh’s first film, In Bruges, which also starred Farrell and Gleeson—emphasizes character over theme.
It's McDonagh's most accomplished work as a filmmaker - less uneven than Three Billboards and more ambitious in theme than In Bruges.
Beginning with 2008’s sublime In Bruges , a dark comedy starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson as two hitmen hiding out in the titular city after an assassination goes awry, all the way to 2017’s Oscar winner Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri which featured a fierce performance from Frances McDormand, the Irish playwright has built a reputation for delivering sterling character-driven dramady.
The theme is the same bickering, posturing masculinity that defined McDonagh’s breakthrough hit man saga In Bruges ; staring down late middle age with nothing to show for it, amateur fiddler Colm (Brendan Gleeson) decides his best shot at self-improvement is ridding himself of his well-meaning but thick-skulled pal Pádraic (Colin Farrell).
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In an initially confounding role swap, Martin McDonagh – who has dealt with Irish themes in his theatre but not, until now, in his cinema work – enters territory previously mapped out by his brother John Michael McDonagh in The Guard and Calvary , both of them starring Brendan Gleeson.
As he drifts into the grisly consequences of this “don’t want to be friends no more” ghosting, we’re reminded of the repellent violence that has been this “dark comedy” specialist’s trademark, and that the brilliant Martin’s never spelled his “message” out as clearly as brother John Michael McDonagh did in his films “The Guard” and “Calvary.”
“Black comedy” is an oversimplification in describing The Banshees of Inisherin, though it comes to mind because this latest from Martin McDonagh feels very much of a piece with his prior films (and plays), as well as the overlapping terrain of his brother John Michael McDonagh’s films ( Calvary , The Guard )—all of which fit that category.
Another McDonagh did forge a career this way, however: Martin’s older brother John Michael, whose 2014 film Calvary , also starring Brendan Gleeson, has left a clear mark on The Banshees of Inisherin .
Ever reliable, Gleeson plays Colm with the intelligence, immovability, and bitterness that McDonagh and his brother, John Michael, have often written for him in films such as In Bruges, The Guard (2011), and Calvary (2014).
Eventually, McDonagh (most recently the writer-director of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri ) attempts to ground his abstract themes about mortality in the literal details of the story, causing the tension to dissipate.
Beginning with 2008’s sublime In Bruges , a dark comedy starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson as two hitmen hiding out in the titular city after an assassination goes awry, all the way to 2017’s Oscar winner Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri which featured a fierce performance from Frances McDormand, the Irish playwright has built a reputation for delivering sterling character-driven dramady.
A more stripped-down affair than the comic gangster stylings of In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths , and less ostensibly topical than Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri , it carries its themes lightly.
Martin McDonagh delivers another pitch-perfect black-comedy after Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2019), with The Banshees of Inisherin reuniting the two stars of his debut feature In Bruges (2008) for a dry comedy about loneliness, masculinity, and legacy.
If you only know writer-director Martin McDonagh from his films, like the Beckett-with-bullets buddy comedy In Bruges (2008) or the curiously divisive Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, MIssouri (2017), you might find this more subdued than his usual concoctions of pulp-fiction archetypes with a penchant for poetic profanity.
That’s the setting for Martin McDonagh’s latest blend of belly laughs and emotional gut punches – arguably, and with apologies to stans of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri , his best film since In Bruges .