The Banshees of Inisherin

In Martin McDonagh's new study of male loneliness, two lifelong friends fall out on a fictional island in Ireland. The result is a black comedy brimming with melancholy

Film Review by Iana Murray | 13 Oct 2022
  • The Banshees of Inisherin
Film title: The Banshees of Inisherin
Director: Martin McDonagh
Starring: Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon, Barry Keoghan, Pat Shortt, Gary Lydon, David Pearse, Sheila Flitton
Release date: 21 Oct

On Inisherin, acres of untouched fertile ground cover a tranquil island occupied by the few locals who covet the isolation. There’s a pub, naturally, and a busier town by the port, but it’s otherwise a peaceful place. It’s 1923, and the relative quiet is only occasionally disrupted by the sound of explosions and gunfire erupting from the mainland in the thick of a civil war.

There’s a very different war raging on Inisherin: one with smaller stakes but no less destructive. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri director Martin McDonagh stages a modest but thrilling tête-à-tête in his marvellous return to his roots. Colin Farrell plays Pádraic, a simple man who waltzes up to the home of his best friend, Colm (Brendan Gleeson), to take him to the pub. But Colm seems uninterested. In the pub, he completely ignores Pádraic to the confusion of the patrons well-acquainted with their odd kinship. When Pádraic confronts him, Colm puts it simply: he just doesn’t want to be his friend anymore.

In many ways, The Banshees of Inisherin finds McDonagh at his most sincere. This is a film, essentially, about the precipitous disintegration of a friendship, and there’s a sombreness to the proceedings. Even within the story’s relatively small scope, it understands how quietly devastating losing a friend can be. It’s like losing the foundations that keep a whole structure standing up. Pádraic is a simple man, fragile and open-hearted. In fact, that’s the very reason Colm decides to cut ties with him: he finds him rather dull, and he’d rather play the fiddle than listen to Pádraic drone on about donkey manure. The notion of cutting ties with Colm is so unfathomable to Pádraic that he foolishly refuses to let him go, but as his former buddy introduces some bloody consequences, he loses not just a friend, but himself. A former friendship evolves into a mournful, bitter feud.

In that sense, melancholy also runs throughout the film, as the rivalry sets up existential quandaries. Colm wants to spend his final years “thinking and composing” in the hopes of having his work live on. Is the company you keep what makes life worth living? Is life meaningless if we fail to leave a mark on the world? As a restrained two-hander, McDonagh's film keeps you enraptured just through the pair’s conversations. If it was up to Pádraic, all one needs is good chat and a trusted companion, but Colm has grander ambitions that Inisherin can’t meet.

This isn’t to say that The Banshees of Inisherin lacks in the dark humour for which McDonagh is so beloved. This may well be his funniest since In Bruges. Every interaction is laced with searing wit and prickly sharpness, and self-inflicted violence adds a thrilling edge. Farrell and Gleeson rise up to the intricacies of McDonagh’s verbose screenplay – Farrell, in particular, is astounding, as he carries Pádraic’s wounds and exhibits his desperation to not be alone. On an isolated island where taciturn men keep their feelings close to their chest, McDonagh’s moving film posits that this aversion to closeness and vulnerability is what ultimately breaks us.


Released 21 Oct by Disney; certificate TBC