The Banshees of Inisherin

🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 *review starts @ 32:10

🎙️ EPISODE 661: 03.09.23 Part of 2022 Week! For a movie with such a unique, isolated and specific setting (a literal island off the coast of Ireland in the hyper-disconnected 1920s), it's amazing how universal the themes felt here. I truly feel like you could tell a version of this story during any time, featuring any place. When it comes down to it, the film is about the value of being kind vs. (or in competition with) the value of being interesting, or — more specifically — art-minded. With the mountains of pervasive loneliness so many feel trapped or smothered by (today, yesterday and tomorrow) is it more important to ensconce yourself in a world of music and art, or is there more merit to living a simple, content life full of kinds and neighborly vibes? You could replace the island with a damn iPad and flipping TikTok and tell a very similar story.

This isn't meant to discredit the setting here (which I think you could actually describe as CHARACTER btw), because Inisherin, with its endless beauty but extremely limiting (both physically and psychologically) qualities is the perfect place for a deranged saga such as this to play out. It even functions as a metaphor by itself, at face value. The quick read here, that The Banshees of Inisherin is about "breaking up with a friend" feels so reductive. The movie's message feels scores larger than that and it's one I'm gonna be thinking about for a long time. That also shortchanges the auxiliary characters, who are among the most flushed-out and rich supporting cast I can remember; not just the Academy-Award nominated Kerry Condon and Barry Keoghan who are both terrific, but Sheila Flitton as Ms. Banshee herself and the disgusting cop played by Gary Lydon, both of whom function deeply within the web of the tale and as intricate, standalone pieces in their own right.

It's a lovely, beautiful and terribly sad film, with as bleak an ending as I can remember. Art might triumph over kindness in the end, but at what cost?

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 661B - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 662A ⫸

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The Banshees of Inisherin is a 2022 black tragicomedy film directed, written, and co-produced by Martin McDonagh. Set on a remote island off the west coast of Ireland, the film stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson as two lifelong friends who find themselves at an impasse when one abruptly ends their relationship, with alarming consequences for both of them; Kerry Condon and Barry Keoghan also star. It reunites Farrell and Gleeson, who previously worked together on McDonagh's directorial debut, In Bruges (2008) It was released on September 5, 2022.