15 years after “See Bruges… and die?” Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson become a dream team again. In Martin McDonagh’s new Oscar-winning film. The film is set in 1923. Colm (Brendan Gleeson) and Padraic (Colin Farrell) are actually best friends. But when one day Padraic Colm wants to pick him up for a ritual visit to the pub, Colm doesn’t want to.
Why do friendships rarely end as formally as love affairs? And what happens to people when the momentum of timelessness that seems inherent in friendship is broken? “The Banshees of Inisherin” gets to the bottom of these questions. With his black philosophical comedy, director Martin McDonagh manages to take an unusual look at two men. A parable of the breaking of the ages. And one of the best films of the year. From Thursday to the cinema.
The Banshees of Inisherin – Movie Synopsis
For his first film since 2017’s Academy Award-winning “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” McDonagh reunited the old gang of Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, who in 2008 blew up “See Bruges…And Die? ” accomplished. The two now play friends Padraic (Farrell) and Colm (Gleeson), who live on a remote island off the west coast of Ireland, until Colm suddenly ends the friendship.
He wants to spend his last years composing and not waste them innocently chatting in the pub with good-natured Padraic. He’s down and can’t accept the end, he’s a good guy. And so Colm finally resorts to the drastic threat of cutting off his finger every time the other speaks to him. The spiral of escalation begins.
The dispute between the two ex-boyfriends affects the entire small isolated island community, which includes Padraic’s sister Siobhan (Kerry Condon), a strong female character who is disgusted by the tumultuous mood. Or Dominic, who shooting star Barry Keoghan calls one of the cutest village idiots in cinematic history.
The Banshees of Inisherin – Movie Review
They are precisely drawn characters, which McDonagh observes with black humor but with calm seriousness. At the same time, the director, well versed in film history, sprinkles a character like Bergmann’s “Seventh Seal” death with the menacing Mrs. McCormick (Sheila Flitton), who finally predicts the end.
For in the end the little community was destroyed just like Irish society in the civil war of 1923, which raged off Inisherin. The only presence on the windswept island is the roar of cannons, which only here and there echoes from the mainland. And inside people, where it inflicts wounds that seem incurable, but hopefully ultimately aren’t.
