The Banshees of Inisherin
20th Century Studios photo via IMDB
Whether or not he wins anything, the movie awards season belongs to Colin Farrell. The chamelionlike actor totally submerged his leading man credentials to star as one of the wonky cave-diving heroes of “Thirteen Lives,” recently reviewed in this space. He stars in the futuristic artificial intelligence drama “After Yang,” that's also in this year's awards hunt.
But the charismatic Irishman's portrayal of Padraic Suilleabhain in “The Banshees of Inisherin” stands above anything he's ever done on a screen before – no small feat in an amazingly varied career. It's an unforgettable performance surrounded by a perfectly cast ensemble, matching him scene for scene. We may well be hearing the names of his “In Bruges” co-star Brendan Gleeson along with Kerry Condon and Barry Keoghan in the supporting categories on Oscar night.
Ironically, the film's real star is London-born writer-director-playwright Martin McDonagh. He puts language worthy of James Joyce or Dylan Thomas into his characters' mouths while making the fictional isle of Inisherin off the Irish coast as hauntingly beautiful as it is rugged and remote. In 1923, with gunfire of the Irish civil war visible on the mainland, the realm feels enchanted sometimes, but batshit eccentric all the time. Living on a little island has that effect.
Padraic is a simple fella with a ready smile and a spring in his step who lives with his spinster sister Siobhan (Condon) in a farmhouse with a thatch roof, thick white walls and various farm animals who often seem wiser than the humans in the vicinity. He's cheerful enough, when he's not drinking, who thinks humans' greatest virtue is to be nice.
All of this gets turned upside down in the film's opening minutes when his best pal and drinking buddy Colm Doherty (Gleeson) decides he doesn't want to be Padraic's friend anymore. The fiddle-playing Colm composes tunes in his own thatch-roof, white-walled cottage where he lives alone. He's hearing the tick-tock of the mortality clock, and has decided not to waste any more of what time he has left with someone as dim as Padraic.
Out of this simple silliness, the tiff escalates into uncharted absurdity. The dialogue, rich with Irish idioms and accents, is delicious, crackling with curses, homespun wisdom and pitch-perfect humor … until everything stops being funny.
As he did with his Oscar-nominated screenplay for “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” McDonagh has an unerring sense of place, and a brilliant ability to find depths and complexities of what it means to be human in the most unassuming of characters.
Of course it takes superb actors to achieve such humility on screen. I had the opportunity to interview Colin Farrell when he was honored by the Maui Film Festival in 2015. The conversation turned soulful and real when the subject of his Irish heritage came up. Although it was more than seven years ago now, his words were prescient, as though about this movie, this role.
“If being Irish has informed me as an artist, I think it’s how it informed me as a man,” he mused. “I have a melancholy to me, and at times I suffer deep bouts of nostalgia, Those aren’t exclusively Irish traits, but the Irish are a melancholy people. We have a love for story, and we see things in context, of story, of folklore — not just ancient folklore or mythologies, but current folklore that is about the designing of one’s life and what one means to their community.”
When I pointed out that a love of language is also part of that birthright, he answered, “I like to feel I love language. I’ve always loved the art of communication, whether it’s physical or verbal or written.”
Co-star Gleeson's Colm embodies that melancholy, too, and when he's not making haunting music (the film's title is the name of his newest tune), the two of them make every scene they share a work of poetry.
But screenwriter/playwright McDonagh isn't stingy, and doesn't save all his best lines for them. When Padraic ponders whether he really is as dim as Colm claims, he's secure in the knowledge that the island already has a village idiot (I don't remember the more lyrical Irish term), Dominic Kearney. Young Barry Keoghan plays the role, often stealing scenes from his veteran co-stars. But then again, so do other cast members – the bartender, the priest, the snoopy shopkeeper – in Inisherin's population of resident loons.
McDonagh lets much of his own wisdom of the heart come from the lovely lips of Kerry Condon. Her Siobhan can find dignity in pathos, and spot ridiculousness in the ways the island's men live by their “principles.” She is patient and wise, loving and strong, ultimately a beacon of hope.
As opposed to the wimpy label “dramedy,” “The Banshees of Inisherin” is both drama and comedy, like life itself. Its exploration of love and longing is profoundly sad at times, but hilarious and thrilling at others.
I loved this movie. It's nice.
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