1923. While the Irish Civil war rages on the mainland, the small (and fictional) island of Inisherin remains a craggy green idyll, albeit one pickled in alcohol.
Padraic (a career-best Colin Farrell) is a dairy farmer living with his kind and shrewd sister, Siobhan (Kerry Condon, also excellent) in a quaint cottage. Neither sibling is married, and their parents died a few years earlier. Their life, while cosy, is small and predictable. This clearly inflames something in Siobhan, who escapes into great works of literature but still feels restless. Padraic, on the other hand, is untroubled and sweet-natured, perfectly happy in the company of his affectionate miniature donkey, Jenny, and each afternoon, making his way to the pub to put the world to rights with his best friend, the curmudgeonly Colm (a simmering Brendan Gleeson), over pints of Guinness.
That is, until one day, when Padraig knocks on Colm’s door, summoning him down to the pub, Colm does not answer. He’s clearly sat inside, smoking in his armchair, but will pay Padraic no mind.
‘Maybe he just doesn’t like you no more’ Siobhan says, as a joke - but this, horrifyingly, turns out to be exactly the case. When confronted, Colm explains he wants to turn the remaining years of his life to the pursuit of his art (he is a skilled fiddle player and composer) and create a legacy for himself. But also - he finds Padraig’s chat profoundly dull and tells him so in no uncertain terms, just igniting an increasingly exasperated battle of wills between the two men, which eventually descends into sour acts of mayhem, with Colm vowing to cut off one of his own fingers each time Padraic tries to speak with him.
Throughout this ordeal, Padraic’s only other friend is Dominic (an effortlessly good Barry Keoghan). Dominic is a flagrantly rude, clueless but ultimately harmless lad, whose spirit is slowly being crushed by his sadistic policeman father. Like so many small towns, pernickety gossip and judgement rule, and Dominic is written off as the village idiot, Siobhan an odd spinster.
The Banshees of Inisherin is a curious film - a true black comedy, serving pathos and humour in equal measure. There are startling shocks of violence The characters are writ large and embodied so wholeheartedly by their actors that they still feel real. There’s a very, very old woman with a foreboding and malevolent presence, who increasingly resembles the grim reaper. I laughed harder than I have in a long time.
While death orbits the narrative, the story is more haunted by a frantic sense of purgatory. There is a fierce desperation and self-loathing underpinning Colm, and the film makes the most sense as a study of profound depression. Gleeson portrays Colm’s existential despair as a huge shadow just below the surface, with moving subtlety. His claims that he needs the time to focus on his craft are undermined by the cruelty with which they are delivered and his own subsequent self-sabotage. It’s unclear exactly what it will take to knock him off this path of self-destruction, but abundantly clear that there’s no chance Padraic will be able to intuit it anyways.
Farrell’s portrayal of Padraic recalled, oddly, that of Jim Carey as Truman Burbank in The Truman Show - hopelessly genuine, too sincere for this world. His fears and bewilderment, however, are mortifyingly universal. Who hasn’t worried that people are laughing at them behind their backs, or that they’ll suddenly lose the interest of their friends?
The movie plays fast and loose with pacing, and there is a lull in the third quarter where I began to wonder where exactly this was all going. But that’s a small quibble against what is ultimately a gleefully droll and perversely touching look at loneliness and friendship, well worth the price of admission.