‘If punching a policeman is a sin, then we may as well pack up and go home,” says Colm to a priest in a moment of exquisite frustration while in the confessional. Delivered brusquely by Brendan Gleeson, the line is exactly what’s so great about The Banshees of Inisherin, which just won the Golden Globe for best comedy of the year.
The line evokes the characteristic Irish flippancy about state authority and the recent past of the film’s setting — during Ireland’s civil war, which followed quickly on the Anglo–Irish War, in which attacks on policemen were routine. It’s clever, literate, and mordantly funny.
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