Minor Spoilers
"How's the despair?", the priest will ask Brendan Gleeson's Colm Doherty when he comes to confession; sometimes he will report it as a little better and sometimes as a little worse. But despair is always there and not just with Colm specifically but throughout Inisherin generally.
Inisherin is a fictional little island just off the Irish cost and the setting for 'The Banshees of Inisherin' the latest film from writer/director Martin McDonagh, best known for 'In Bruges' (which like this film stars Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrall) and the Oscar winning 'Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri'.
It is 1923 and the post independence Irish Civil War rages on the mainland. The people of Inisherin pay it little mind, shunning news of it as unimportant but often commenting when the sounds of arms fire can occasionally be heard from across their little moat. A "civil war" of another sort has caught the imagination of the islanders, Colm Doherty the fiddle player dosen't want to be friends with Pádraic Súilleabháin (Colin Ferrell) the dairy man anymore. The two had been best friends for years, you could about set your clock from the 2pm pint they would enjoy at the tavern together, then one day Colm just didn't like Padraic anymore.
When pressed on the matter Colm says that he can feel the time slipping away on him, the friendship with Padraic represents wasted hours he could spend compossing, besides which Mr. Suilleabhan is a dull man who once spent two hours "I timed it" discoursing on things he found in the waste of his beloved miniture donky "Jenny".
Like Colm Padraic is a sad man, a life long bachelor he has little in his life of value, chiefly "Jenny", his sister Siobhán (Kerry Condon) and the friendship with Colm. The loss of that friendship is incomprehensable to Padraic, try as he might he can't wrap his mind around it, it must have been something he has done, there must be something he can do. He pressures Colm who finally gives him an ultimatum, leave him alone, don't talk to him, or every time he does he will shear off a finger and deliver it to him.
The priest asks Colm if he left anything out of his confession, he says no. The Priest asks what happened between him and Padraic? Colm asks if it's a sin to not be friends with a man? The priest says no but that it isn't nice.
Padraic is considerd a nice man by his neighbours, certainly Dominic Kearny (Barry Keoghan) thinks so. That Padraic and Colm have had a falling out presents him an opportunity to make Padraic his new best friend. Dominic is considerd to be the dimist man on the island and is lacking in friends. Dominic's father is the local constable, a mean drunk who beats him. Being friends with Padraic would get him out of the house and allow opportunity to be near Siobhan, whom he fancies.
A new friend however is insufficient distraction, Padraic is still obsessing, looking for ways to repair things with Colm, or failing that get some kind of revenge. Siobhan starts seriously considering a job offer at a library on the mainland, Dominic starts thinking Padraic not so nice, Mrs. McCormick (Shelia Flitton) the local soothsayer states that death is coming to the island soon, "One, maybe two". A reckoning awaits.
'The Banshees of Inisharian' is elegantly consturcted, full of parallels and counterpoints, a prolonged parable that cries out for exigious. A sad rumination on depression, existential angist, frustration and dispair. I found it unexpectedly profound, perhaps the most thought provoking film of the year, a status I had thought 'Women Talking' had all sown up. In addition for roughly it's first half or so this is one of the funniest movies of the year, the situation is absurd, even as it becomes tragic. ****
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