‘The Banshees of Inisherin’ review: A fantastic tragicomedy

The Banshees of Inisherin

English (Hotstar)

Director: Martin McDonaugh

Cast: Colin Farrell, Kerry Condon, Brendan Gleeson, Barry Keoghan

Rating: 3.5/5

What kind of drama can ensue when a friend cancels another for no seemingly good reason? “I don’t like you no more!” With a premise as simple as that, a deep relationship breaks down.

Martin McDonaugh places The Banshees of Inisherin on an island near Ireland in 1923, when the Irish civil war was almost ending. Inisherin is a quaint but boring place where the only spaces for socialising are a local pub and a church. Most men and women are unmarried and there are no youngsters or children here.

Padraic (Colin Farrell) starts bargaining with Colm (Brendan Gleeson) to figure out and rebuild the broken friendship. What follows holds a mirror to the absurdity of lonely lives trapped without choices, meeting the same people again and again, and trying to find what they lack, and how ego can play a destructive role.

The dog, donkeys and other livestock and animals are an inseparable part of the lives of these people. They crave for news, reading and music. Some just want to get away from the island in search of an interesting life, like Padraic’s sister Siobhan.

Only Padraic seems stuck, brooding over the lost relationship. To maintain distance from him, Colm says he is a dull person, except when he is drunk. The fiddle-player musician’s tendency to self-destruct crosses all limits of imagination of what one can do to keep away from a relationship.

There are no Banshees who are believed to “portend death” on the island, but there is one old, all-knowing creepy woman who does portend two deaths. But who dies there? Was it just an animal and a wasted human? Or was it something inside the two protagonists, who lose something for each other, forever?

“Some things, there’s no moving on from,” says Padraic, indicating the continuity of the psychological conflict between them, though he refers to the civil war.

Though the movie addresses ego, loneliness, hypocrisy and the futility of life, it really is open to interpretation. Until the end, the story does not try to convince the viewer why Colm decides to break up, and the answers are left to the viewer’s imagination. That’s just one of the things that stand out in the movie. McDonaugh captures the nuances and complications in visuals and dialogues excellently. Being a lovely cocktail of satire, absurdity and contradictions, no wonder this tragicomedy has secured nine Oscar nominations.