McDonagh’s ‘Banshees’ Sound an Enjoyable Tune

H ath not a critic eyes? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you give us In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths, do we not hope that Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri will be just as good, if not better? And if that hope is bitterly disappointed — if we find that your signature blend of skewed realism, charming wit, and grim violence has curdled into something contrived, smug, and maudlin — do we not react to the news that your next project as writer-director will be to re-team with In Bruges stars Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell with a stomach-tightening admixture of excitement and anxiety? Oh dear —will this be a glorious return to form or a sad attempt to recapture the old magic? And faith and begorrah, it’s set in Ireland during the Civil War. Nothing could go wrong there! By which I mean, everything could go wrong there.

All of this is to explain that watching Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin was a complicated business for your humble correspondent. As a critic, you try to go in clear-eyed and open-hearted, to keep your own expectations and affections out of the equation. But every now and then, you get your hopes up despite yourself. Once in a while, you are gloriously rewarded with something like Mad Max: Fury Road. But only once in a while. I’m happy to report that Banshees is another such occasion: a delicate but devastating depiction of the tension between greatness and goodness that uses (reflects?) its setting to profound effect. It is as hard on the heart as it is easy on the eyes, as ugly in its convictions as it is lovely in its construction. It’s deep without putting on airs, moving without reaching for sentiment, and intimate without becoming insular. It’s good, is what I’m saying.

Colin Farrell plays Pádraic, happy resident of Inisherin, a tiny island just off the coast of Ireland. It’s close enough that you can hear the guns of war in the distance, and even see the occasional plume of black smoke smudging the clean sky. Itso close enough that a priest can take the boat over on Sunday morning to say Mass and hear confessions. When Pádraic’s friend Colm (Gleeson) steps into the booth, the priest gently asks him about his struggle with despair. Colm is happy to report that he’s doing better on that front, and the viewer may be tempted to conclude that it’s because he’s found some meaningful activity: composing a song titled “The Banshees of Inisherin.” But these aren’t the ordinary sort of banshees, the ones who herald death with their howls. These are different, says Colm: They simply “sit back and observe.”

But Colm’s creative burst comes at a price: Around the same time as he begins the work of putting a new song into the world, he tells his old friend Pádraic that they’re quits. At first, he keeps things mysterious but gentle: “I just don’t like you no more.” But it’s not enough — not when Pádraic insists, “But you liked me yesterday” — and eventually, Colm has to come clean and tell his drinking buddy that he’s dull. Talking with him, he feels “time slipping away. None of it helps me.” The news is stunning to Pádraic; neither dullness nor its opposite were ever an issue for him. He was content to be a nice fellow, “one of life’s good guys.” And indeed, he’s decent enough to make time for the village simpleton, a young man named Dominic (Barry Keoghan, handling a tricky role with both aplomb and feeling).

Whether or not he’s dull, Pádraic is stubborn, determined to sort things out and set them aright. There’s but one pub in town, and he can’t just sit on one side and watch his old friend build a new life on the other. But Colm proves even more stubborn, and promises that every time Pádraic talks to him, he’ll take his shears and cut off one of his own fingers. An extreme threat, but one made dispassionately and in earnest. At this point, the narrative begins to feel like a fable. There may be a reason for that, just as there may be a reason for McDonagh’s artful inclusion of gravestones and monuments in so many shots. Nothing that follows feels inevitable, but it all feels weirdly plausible. Every character contributes to the story, from Pádraic’s kind but frustrated sister to the village’s blithely brutal policeman to the wizened old woman with a pipe who stops over to talk about who died when. The dialogue employs a similar economy, so that when you hear an exchange like the following, your ears perk up:

“Do you think God gives a damn about miniature donkeys?”

“I fear he doesn’t, and that’s where it’s all gone wrong.”

Looking over what I’ve written, I fear I’ve failed to convey just how funny the film is. Maybe that’s because the humor is unshowy. Maybe it’s because it’s so clearly deployed against the darkness, and the darkness just might overcome it. But it is funny, in the way that McDonagh is often funny, and it’s probably possible to enjoy the hell out of The Banshees of Inisherin even if you think this review is a lot of overwrought nonsense. As I said, it’s a good movie.