The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) – 3/5

Irelands and islands, and the people on them

„The Banshees of Inisherin“ is a fairly new movie that comes close to the two-hour mark and here we have a co-production between Great Britain, the United States and Ireland. If you look at several factors from the production of this film, the Irish impact is really dominant here. This includes the cast, includes where the film is set, includes the man who wrote and directed the film and includes the heavy accents you hear from beginning to end. This is one of the biggest awards players this season. It won over 100 honors, was nominated for over 300 more, so it comes close to a total of 500 nominations and maybe it will even exceed this magical number at some point. It scored nine Oscar nominations and not winning a single Academy Award seems highly unlikely. Especially the screenplay has a good shot and I think the supporting actress category is now maybe a 50-50 thing between Condon and Angela Bassett, but we will see. Whoever wins the SAG Award is surely the frontrunner then. Colin Farrell won a Golden Globe, but he may have a hard time at the Oscars against Butler and Fraser. Keoghan’s BAFTA win came a bit out of nowhere really and we will see how it goes at the Oscars then. I still feel like the clear frontrunner so far will not lose to Keoghan or anybody else. If anybody had predicted this film to win said category, I am sure Gleeson would have been the odds-on favorite. I am not super surprised though. I like Gleeson a lot, but he has several better performances, still cool that he got in at the Oscars. McDonagh always has a talent to direct his actors to Oscar nominations, maybe even wins and four people being nominated again this time is surely evidence of that, even if one win would already be a nice achievement. No easy frontrunner here like McDormand and Rockwell, but again he got two males nominated in the supporting category.

I like McDonagh, he has a pretty great body of work and I must still say this film here, his newest, is not even remotely close to being my favorite of his. Of course, given all the Irish impact here, it has to be a very personal project and I am glad it got made and I am also glad I saw it today. The one thing he always succeeds with is dark comedy. There were some laugh-out-loud moments here in the first half really from this perspective. Also some in the second half, but there it got a tad more dramatic. I mean one character cutting off all the fingers from his hand is telling enough I would say. Or a really awesome donkey dying. Jenny would definitely have been nominated for an animal Oscar this year. I just wanna hug her. But I am a huge donkey fan anyway. It is a good year for donkey movies for sure as „EO“ a bit surprisingly to me also found its way to an Oscar nomination in the foreign language feature category or whatever it is called nowadays. In addition to this, it is a good year for Irish films as there is a film from this country in the same category as well, even if it is maybe the least likely from the quintet to win. Still a huge success if we see over which films it got in there, for example a new Asian film by a very renowned director. But back to the Banshees now: I already talked about the comedy here and I feel kinda bad for people who did not find any of this funny, the ones who go down to the basement to have a laugh as we say in Germany. Sad creatures. So I hope you will smile at least while seeing this film, but here and there you actually have to laugh I am sure too. McDonagh is just really great in terms of situational comedy and dialogue writing. Always has been, always will be. I could give you a double-digit number of examples, but I will just stick to one now and that was when Farrell’s character enters Gleeson’s character’s home and says he is not here for lickin‘ when the latter’s dog approaches him and licks his fingers. This scene, however, also results into some of the biggest drama because as a consequence one character cuts off all the fingers from his hand then and one of them is eaten by the aforementioned donkey, well not eaten but he dies from trying to eat it, so tragedy galore there. Of course, the parallel between fingers being licked and being cut off is also a fairly dark one.

As for the dog, that one was also really amazing of course. It had its moment when it tried to carry the scissors away from Gleeson’s character. That was one tough bloke though. He seems to feel no pain after cutting his fingers off. I did not even know you would not bleed to death then literally, but he seems alright. They also put away the idea that he is dying or that he is depressed, even if there were in a way mentions of the latter when he was talking to the local priest. Overall though, there is no fake melodrama in here and McDonagh made this clear from the very start. It seems as if Gleeson’s character really just thinks about his life not being fulfilling and memorable enough and that is why he has to cut ties and focus on creativity, music in his case really. Still, honestly, when he is there towards the end with the other musicians and he has no fingers any more, but still makes wild gestures, you could wonder if he had really lost his mind. In the end then, when Farrell’s character takes revenge for his donkey, it is all about the question if Gleeson’s character will leave his home or not. Is he ready to die? The solution is that he is not, but that the two are then in a way enemies, even if one is always ready and willing to look after the other’s animal. Maybe it was these events that had to happen for Farrell’s character to be really ready to let Gleeson’s go then. These two actors also starred in „In Bruges“ together, a movie that got also made by McDonagh and that one I liked more for example, but only because it was quite great and this one here is just good. It did not suck or anything. McDonagh has worked with both actors on other occasions like „Seven Psychopaths“ or the short film that was his first work almost 20 years ago, a movie with Gleeson in the lead, that won McDonagh a short film Oscar.

As for the title of this new film here, I am undecided. Inisherin is a location where the cliffs and the sea are as rough as the people, but with Banshees I just don’t know. I thought from how the word is used in a video game that it would describe death fairies and that would fit at least one mysterious character we see on a few occasions, but they just translated it with „ghosts“ here. Perhaps not so perfect. Anyway, back to the cast: Farrell and Keoghan also worked on a film together, one without McDonagh, that one turned into a success, so even for them it is a reunion. Keoghan looks so young anyway, I would not have thought he is over 30 anyway. His character then towards the end becomes tragic and before that he is referenced mostly as the village idiot and this twist then, fueled by his violent police officer dad, shows us that there was more to the character than we thought. He was disappointed in Farrell’s character, he found out that the woman he likes (okay, he likes many) is not romantically interested in him and also he had to constantly face violence at home. There is far more to this young man than comic relief. Nice to see the BAFTAs recognize it. How he went though, I think we can say it was most likely suicide with the story his dad tells us and the nosy store owner earlier. As for Kerry Condon, I liked her character a lot. I thought she was smart and also pretty and it is nice she managed to get away from the island that held her back and had a future on the continent then. Maybe she will meet her brother again, maybe not. I feel like there will be a reunion. I also thought it made sense that he did not write her about the donkey’s fate, on the one hand because he was still hurting and on the other hand because he did not want her to worry about him as she knew how much the animal meant to him. He was happy for his sister to have made that big step and did not want her to take it back, even if he was clearly missing her. And surely he was not the smartest fella as we see when he does not know the word „touché“ or when he tells Gleeson’s character what he did to his new friend. Definitely not a smart move. One with drastic consequences then.

The aforementioned police officer is a very violent man as we see from his actions when he punches the protagonist and hear from his words when he talks about an upcoming execution. One that is politically motivated and he does not even remember who kills whom. But this was surely interesting because if you look at the gunshots being fired in the distance there towards the end, you can absolutely make a connection between the two main characters and the two political groups fighting each other. The comment about how things were easier when they were just fighting the English can be seen as a parallel of struggling with life as a whole, but the more specific mention of the Irish groups can definitely be seen in a way as the fighting between Farrell’s and Gleeson’s characters. It is also debatable if Gleeson is really supporting. He is on the edge of being a co-lead. Does not have to be a lead as significant as Farrell in here. Another thing that came to my mind is that perhaps McDonagh started enjoying burning down things as fire towards the end already played a big role in his previous movie and also there was a key character in danger of dying in the flames and here it is the same. Still, the one thing that hit maybe closest to home for me was the idea of getting stuff done during your lifetime, the late-life crisis if you wanna call it that, that has so vividly left its mark on Gleeson’s character. The elaboration on musicians being remembered centuries later was extremely well-written and also a bit funny again with how he gets the century wrong. That is all then. This film gets a thumbs-up from me, which was never in doubt. I recommend watching „The Banshees of Inisherin“.