The Banshees of Inisherin (dir. Martin McDonagh, 2023) — Review

A wry, bitter parable of provincial resentment, The Banshees of Inisherin reunites Gaelic bad boy Martin McDonough with the stars of his 2008 hit In Bruges, which turned the work away day of two sour Irishmen into an unlikely feelgood yarn. Glowering elder Brendan Gleeson and hangdog underling Colin Farrell return, but blasted back a century to 1923, and a barren island off the West Coast of Ireland. If you thought Bruges was a bad spot to end up, at least the protagonists of the last film had the entertainment of a hit to carry out. Inisherin, instead, sets the scene for what turns into a dark, gritty spin on the setup of Father Ted- very 2020s.

On this darker counterpart to Craggy Island, affable dairy farmer Pádraic (Farrell) has little to do beyond skulking around the village pub, tending his beloved miniature donkey, and trailing after his BFF Colm (Gleeson). Like doltish younger priest Dougal in Father Ted, he has a childlike contentment with his lot- at least until Colm starts avoiding him.

“Maybe he just don’t like you no more,” hypothesises Pádraic’s sister Siobhán (Kerry Condon)- a laughable prospect until Colm stumps over to confirm, mirthlessly, the Greek tragedy of the ensuing setup. Trapped on a tiny island, its residents forever in spitting distance of each other, Colm refuses to ever speak to Pádraic again. The simple reason, he explains, is that Pádraic is dull, and there are only so many years in a life. And so the two come horribly asunder, the dark consequences played out between a grumpy, pretentious musician craving solitude for his art, and the animal-loving manbaby. Farrell and Gleeson could light up an entire feature with two hours of small talk, turning McDonagh’s biting, wistful dialogue into a particularly Irish meditation on spite and selfishness.

Unfazed by the Civil War on the mainland, Inisherin’s residents enjoy a life of cosy knitwear and pints at 2pm on the dot, making the fallout between the friends a highlight of village gossip. The bug eyed priest (David Pearse) brings it up to both during confession, while the sweethearted village eejit Dominic (Barry Keoghan) takes the opportunity both to lobby for peace and to move into Pádraic’s menagerie of a home. As the well-meaning idiocy of both the place and its residents continue to press in on Colm, he takes drastic and perhaps predictably Irish measures in protest. After a deliberately Riverdance-ready opening shot, with vistas of a rainbow over the lush hills and obligatory fiddle music, McDonough marches off dutifully in the exact opposite stereotype of the Emerald Isle.

Typically for a film with the metaphor of the Irish Civil War, the sister of the combatant- Pádraic’s caretaker Siobhán- finds herself carrying the emotional stakes of the film, rapidly identifying the conflict, its causes, and its likely end. Actress Kerry Condon has collaborated with writer-director Martin McDonagh since landing the lead in his 2001 play The Lieutenant of Inishmore, aged just 18; her ability to ground the writer’s work in a sense of quiet torture proves key to balancing the bitter childishness of the film’s stars. Siobhán provides the sole point of relatability for a modern viewer, burned out by constant peacemaking at the pub and throwing out “feck”-laced protests at Colm’s artistic prevention. Despite the characteristically macabre and unsubtle direction of McDonagh’s filmmaking, Condon’s exasperation adds the nuance and sense of internal conflict required to take this island of overgrown toddlers seriously.

The Irish Civil War heard raging offscreen- on the mainland where Siobhán flees to work in a library- emerged from the Irish War of Independence, then the conflict over the Anglo-Irish Treaty. The anonymous gunshots in the film thus offer a trace of a vast, arguably still enduring cycle of strife and bloodshed for the exhausted Irish people. McDonagh’s satirical, postmodern style nods to the tradition of JM Synge and Patrick McCabe, but beyond the Hollywood audience, some may cringe at the ‘Stage Irish’ aspects of the production. The pub’s host of jigging, Guinness-swilling drunks and and the resident soothsaying crone strain one’s patience at times, but as a portrait of the forgotten and invisible people behind a traumatic and formative period of national history, The Banshees of Inisherin has a pleasing mix of resignation and empathy.