Nothing, Nowhere, Not Even Once: An Oscars 2023 Round Up (part one)
The Banshees of Inisherin
Martin mommy-when-I-grow-up-I-want-to-be-the-Cohen-brothers McDonagh returns with his first feature since the abysmal Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and returns to what he knows best: putting Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell in the same room. As with In Bruges, the tension stems from the fact that one of them doesn’t want to be there: in this case, Gleeson’s Colm Doherty having suddenly ended his long friendship with Farrell, Pádraic Súilleabháin, as a result of him being dull. Despite being two of the small number of inhabitants of the fictional island of Inisherin, Colm has come to value solitude over company, hoping to concentrate on composing music for his fiddle and inward reflection. In doing so he (at least attempts to) refuse all interaction with Pádraic. This “Bartleby the Fiddler” routine extends even to the point of cutting off his own fingers. Pointedly: the very ones he needs to play his instrument. Across the water, 1923 is happening: the Irish Civil War during which the Free State was formed. This context, however, is largely only there to emphasise the isolation of the islanders, provide a few explosions and the odd glib one-liner. In this way, the war stands as an accurate physical manifestation of the director’s own relationship to Ireland. It serves as window dressing, a watery veil that provides both irony and sentiment without having to commit in any real way to either. Stereotypes are used, with a knowing wink (Colin Farrell pretty much enters the film by emerging from a fucking rainbow), but never challenged.
The big surprise of Banshees is that it’s actually half-decent. Farrell and Gleeson both turn in good performances, the absurd outbursts of self-mutilation are the right mix of funny and grim, and the pace is in keeping with the pace Inisherin’s inhabitants, a slow burn of gossip, resentments and deepening grudges. Along the way the film almost manages to say some interesting things about masculinity and the loss of friendship that break new ground for McDonagh in terms of emotional intelligence and the portrayal of the human psyche. The core of this is Farrell, driven to recoup his friendship at all costs, and losing the good in his heart in the process. This good, which is not innocence but is sometimes treated as though it is, stands as the one precious thing on Inisherin, a foil for the snobbish Colm’s fiddle compositions, his wish to create a lasting art. When it does not lose its way, this tension is the driving force of the film.
Inevitably, there are weaknesses. Dominic Kearney, a solidly-constructed character who has learning difficulties and is a victim of paternal sexual abuse, has the potential anchor Farrell’s sense of good as well as the film’s black humour, but Barry Keoghan’s performance unfortunately bears too close to pastiche in a way that feels like a missed opportunity. In addition, the Irish accents are all over the place geographically which, given the mostly Irish cast, seems like another material presentation of McDonagh’s flimsy relationship with Ireland. The audiences he is writing for might not know the difference.
Speaking of writing, it is undoubtedly improved from previous films, the best since In Bruges, but not exactly brilliant. Kerry Condon does the best she can with Siobhán Súilleabháin, Pádraic’s bookish sister, and one wishes she had slightly better material to work with. Siobhán is however a cut above Three Billboards’ truly risible Mildred, which crammed Frances McDormand into a role with less depth than Herod in an infant school nativity play (albeit perhaps one so frightening that no-one could refuse her an Oscar). If McDonagh continues improving, he may write a two-dimensional woman before the decade is out. There is also, in the scene between the two leads on the beach near the end, a ham-fisted and badly conceived attempt to tie their personal grudges into the historical fabric of the war. This is particularly irritating because it works directly against the personal, concrete relationship that gives the film its emotional resonance, draining it of import as it becomes a cardboard symbol of historical forces. It is as though McDonagh does not trust the writing to say enough on its own, and while one might have agreed previously with his assessment, here it is dispiriting because, for a while, Banshees is on to a good thing.
There might be something more to be said about the causal employment of history, and its offensively thin political gestures, but really it is hard to fault Banshees for wanting to keep the these things at arms’ length. The thought of McDonagh attempting to make a “political film” is positively shudder-inducing and the fact alone that the whole thing doesn’t end up being “Guy Ritchie’s Craggy Island” is an achievement in and of itself. What there is, for the first time, is a sense that McDonagh might have something original to say about the human condition (well, one half of it) as well as, for the first time in over a decade, the sense that he might be capable of making a genuinely good film.
