The Banshees of Inisherin

 

Writer / director Martin McDonagh has a beautiful way of depicting hell on earth.

In his latest film, The Banshees of Inisherin, McDonagh -- who hasn't directed a lot of films but whose work is impactful [Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri; Seven Psychopaths; In Bruges] -- tells of the dismal mundaneness of life on a picturesque but remote Irish island where residents rely on one another for company and diversion -- not always good and not always healthy.

It's 1923, and Pádraic (Colin Ferrell) plans his days around his 2 p.m. appointment to get a pint with his longtime friend Colm (Brendan Gleeson). He is thrown when Colm, a fiddler, rebuffs him, telling Pádraic, who is a simple dairy farmer, to leave him alone, without reason or explanation.

When Pádraic presses for answers, Colm threatens to do himself harm if the other man persists. Pádraic's perplexed woundedness is as apparent as Colm's misery. It's a nightmare scenario that roils everything on the island, which seems to be bound together by predictable routines.

Pádraic's sister, Siobhan, played by Kerry Condon, tries to intervene but with no success, and advice from a perky but pesky lad, Dominic (Barry Keoghan), makes matters worse. All the while, across the channel separating the island from the mainland, the sounds and flares of civil war serve as backdrop.

McDonagh offers a lot for audiences to reflect on as they watch the dissolution of valued human connections. How do we define ourselves and the nature of our relationships?

It's never made absolutely clear why Colm banishes his friend -- he claims Pádraic is too dull and uninspiring for him -- but we wonder if the maudlin musician is depriving himself of something he values greatly to torment himself. For art must come from pain.

If hell is other people, as Sartre famously said, then it also must be their absence.