Colin Farrell loses boyfriend in ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’

In April 1923, an unexpected development took place on the small island of Inisherin off the west coast of Ireland. Colm Sonny Larry Doherty decides to stop going to the pub with Pádraic Súilleabháin.

Colm Sonny Larry (Brendan Gleeson) lives a secluded life in a lonely house across the bay. Pádraic (Colin Farrell) always picks him up there at two in the afternoon sharp. One day in April – a day like any other in the sparsely populated island – Pádraic knocks on his friend’s door in vain. Through the window he sees him sitting inside and smoking. “Colm, are you coming? It’s two o’clock!” Colm stays seated.

Pádraic must tell his sister Siobhán about this. “I knocked on Colm Sonny Larry’s and he just sat there,” he reports at home. “He sits there and does what?” asks Siobhán (Kerry Condon), who lives with Pádraic on a simple farm with a pony and donkey. “Sit there and do nothing, smoke.” Siobhán wants to know whether the brother had a fight with his friend. “Did you guys fight?” asks the bartender in the pub when Pádraic comes alone. Pádraic repeats what he knows. “He sits there and does nothing, smokes.”

It’s mysterious. Especially when Colm suddenly shows up in the pub in a good mood. But when he sees Pádraic, he turns away. “Sit somewhere else,” he growls. And sits down somewhere else. Pádraic demands to know what he actually did to him. Colm looks him in the face. He didn’t do anything to him. “I just don’t like you anymore.” – «Yes, but» protests Pádraic. “You liked me yesterday.”

It’s war

This is how it starts. A man breaks friendship with the other. Out of nowhere. Then the conflict hardens. It degenerates, words become deeds. From “Colm, are you coming? It’s two o’clock” becomes at some point: “Tomorrow, two o’clock, I will stand in front of your house and set it on fire.”

Director Martin McDonagh shows the breakup of a friendship in stages of escalation. What sounds like war is actually one: while Colm and Pádraic are fighting on the island, the Irish Civil War is raging on the mainland. Over in the distance the cannons are thundering. The friends’ feud reflects the civil war.

In Irish folklore, a banshee is a spirit who predicts impending death. «The Banshees of Inisherin» is a film about the small dying of a friendship, in which the big dying resonates. It’s a bulky title. But McDonagh has done very well with a bulky title: With his last film, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”, he received seven Oscar nominations in 2018. Also, McDonagh may tell a simple story, but he doesn’t want to make it easy for you. And neither do the characters. They do what they have to do but shouldn’t. That’s how drama comes out.

Martin McDonagh can write. The dialogues are sharply polished, every word whets. He’s eloquent as a narrator, a romantic and softie, and then a boor at times. McDonagh draws beautiful pictures because he wants to break them. A fine spirit with fantasies of violence. In his films, violence always erupts at some point, which is irritating and that’s exactly what it should be. Because McDonagh understands that violence in film has to be irritating. It only becomes questionable when she doesn’t do it.

Tolstoy instead of Tarantino

But he also had to learn that. With his debut «In Bruges» (2017), the man who came from the theater got involved in the cinema. The gangster farce was laced with irony. As if it were one of Quentin Tarantino. What was so well received that McDonagh overdid it the next time: In “Seven Psychopaths” he turned the violence into fun.

Today McDonagh is more considered, his godfather is Tolstoy instead of Tarantino. He probably read his story “Father Sergei”. When a woman harassed the hermit Sergej in Tolstoy, he chopped off a finger with an axe. At McDonagh, the hermit Colm grabs the sheep shears.

Pádraic cannot accept that the friendship is over. He follows Colm like a trained dog. Until Colm threatened to cut off his finger. And then a second. He will keep cutting his own fingers off until Pádraic leaves him alone. Or he, Colm, doesn’t have any fingers anymore.

What’s gotten into him – would he rather mutilate himself than continue to associate with Pádraic? Could it be that he has “impure thoughts” and is therefore castigating himself? That’s what the priest on the island thinks, but Colm wishes the man to hell. Pádraic is just terribly dull, dull, Colm explains to Pádraic’s sister. “But he’s always been dull,” replies the sister.

Laconic and sad

Colm has no more time for boring pastimes. Instead of sitting in the pub, he wants to play the violin. He is a folk musician and would like to compose again in his old age. So is Martin McDonagh telling a story of the sacrifice that must be made for art? On the contrary, it becomes an awkward dilemma. Because Colm can cut off his fingers and keep Pádraic off his neck. But the fewer fingers he has, the more difficult it becomes with the violin.

«The Banshees of Inisherin» is a ballad of laconic wit. But that doesn’t make her weird. Rather even sadder. “Colm Doherty, do you know what you used to be?” says Pádraic. “You were nice.” But being nice isn’t something that stands the test of time, Colm replies. music stay. Painting, poetry stay.

He wants to know from Pádraic who comes to mind from two hundred years ago who was nice. “Yes who?” – “Absolutely no one,” says Colm. But everyone knows Mozart. Padraic shakes his head. “Not me. So much for your theory.” Martin McDonagh sticks to one like the other: “The Banshees of Inisherin” is a film that is deeply human. But never too nice. One that will stay.

“The Banshees of Inisherin” is in cinemas.