Looking for the Banshees of Inisherin
Banshees of Inisherin has a dark beauty, or “a terrible beauty” to borrow W.B. Yeat’s striking phrase from his poem “Easter, 1916” about the 1916 Easter Uprising. That conflict was the precursor to the Irish Civil War which is visible on the horizon of this story in the form of distant explosions and plumes of smoke. That background creates a keen tension of approaching disaster. War is also used a framing device to image the unresolvable conflict and collateral damage that unfolds in this story.
On the island of Inisherin we are introduced to the odd behavior of one Colm Doherty (Brendan Gleeson) who has decided to reject his friend Pádraic (Colin Ferrell). Rejection, loyalty, and the search for authentic life run through this storyline. Pádraic struggles to come to terms with Colm’s harsh statement that he can no longer be bothered to endure endless boring chats with him.
Colm meanwhile is on a quest to leave a mark before he dies, a fiddle tune he is writing. He won’t put up with another two hour story from Pádraic “about things you found in your little donkey’s shite”.
Colm threatens to mutilate himself if Pádraic ever talks to him again and that threat sets the other line of tension that propels the story.
Beside the riveting. performances of the two principles, the ensemble is solidified with support from Kerry Condon. (Pádraic’s sister Siobhán) and Barry Keoghan as Pádraic’s loyal but simple minded friend Dominic.
Dominic suffers a parallel rejection from Siobhán in a truly heartbreaking scene that ends with him saying, “Well, there goes that dream.” His portrayal of crushed vulnerability taps into a common element each one of us can feature from our own memories.
The script has received a well deserved nomination for an Oscar (it received Best Screenplay at the Golden Globes). The characters are vivid and the tale is compelling. The small moments of humor ease the dark story about social isolation and mortality, Some of the best come from Dominic.
Discussing the distant war on the mainland, Dominic has this take, “Me, I pay no attention to wars. I’m agin’ em. Wars and soap.”
At one point Dominic’s sadistic father beats him for stealing his liquor. Dominic shows the scars from it the next day, explaining how he got them, “A kettle was the final thing. I wouldn’t mind it, but for the spout.”
Though it lays itself open to the accusation of taking no moral stance, unable to even favor easily identifiable goods like kindness or creativity, to call the film amoral is inaccurate. Sometimes a deeper dive below pristine categories becomes the only truly moral exercise. This movie manages to hold cruelty and kindness in a kind of vibration, a wholeness, evidence of our lived contradiction.
