Dry stone walls, ponies, fiddles, pints of stout, confession booths, donkeys, poteen, The Virgin Mary, and fecking. More fecking fecking than you can fecking believe. Not for one moment will you believe that Martin McDonagh's The Banshees Of Inisherin is set anywhere other than rural Ireland even if the story it tells could, quite easily, be set in any place or at any time.
In 1923, as a Civil War, "a bad do", rages across Ireland, the small island of Inisherin is barely affected. There rural life continues as it must have done for centuries. Farmers tend their animals, waves crash dramatically against the rocks, and every afternoon at 2pm Padraic Suilleabhain (Colin Farrell) calls at his friend Colm Doherty's (Brendan Gleeson) house and the two of them repair to JJ Devine's pub for a few pints of the dark stuff and a chat.
Until one day, Colm refuses to answer the door. Peering through the window, Padraic can see Colm sat there, smoking, refusing to move. Colm, it seems, has had enough of Padraic who he considers to be a "limited man" and he no longer wants to be friends with him. He wants to focus on writing music and making, to his mind, the most of the time he has left and he is prepared to go to fairly extreme measures to demonstrate to Padraic, and others, just how serious he is about this.
Colm, understandably, is aghast. He asks his sister Siobhan (Kerry Condon) if he's dull, if he's dim, and, most importantly of all, if he's nice. Siobhan both teases and reassures him but she's got her own life and her own concerns to focus on. Inisherin, it seems, it too small, too judgemental, and too stultifying for her.
Romantic overtures from feeble minded but well intentioned Dominic (Barry Keoghan) are not enough for her and we see her frustration with the island grow as surely as Colm's frustration with Padriac and - later - Padraic's frustration with Colm, does. Dominic, for his part, has to contend with a violent alcoholic of a father in local policeman Paedar (Gary Lydon).
A flippant view could imagine this film to be Father Ted as reimagined by Samuel Beckett but the harsh beauty of the land is echoed in the harsh beauty of those that call it home and The Banshees Of Inisherin is beautifully shot, wonderfully acted (props to David Pearse as an irritable priest and Sheila Flitton as Mrs McCormick - the nearest the film gets to an actual banshee), and, as you may expect with McDonagh, it is brilliantly scripted.
As well as being peppered with ink black humour, the dialogue is sparser than I'd come to expect with McDonagh but that fits with the setting and creates space for us to get to know all the main characters. The Banshees Of Inisherin is, ultimately, a meditation on themes as timeless as friendship, ageing, loneliness, isolation, animal husbandry, and the passing of time. More than anything it asks what it means to be alive, what it means to be a man. Is it more important to be important or is it nicer to be nice?
Thanks to Michelle for joining me in watching this film at Broughton Cineworld and thanks to her and Evie for a lovely weekend of vegan Chinese food, parks, parties, pumpkin picking, and maize mazes.
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