Gers wrote:
The Banshees of Inisherin
Oh my God! This is possibly one of the greatest movies I’ve ever seen. It’s a rare thing for a film to have you laughing out loud at some of the funniest one liners ever committed to celluloid. For example when one of the characters finds a stick with a hook on the end… “Now! What do you suppose you’d do with this? Except hook things that are a stick’s length away”, to having you on the verge of tears with a truly heartbreaking scene. I actually raised my hand to my mouth in shock at one point. It was a true heartbreaker.
Starts off with a simple line that sets the tone for the rest of the movie… “I guess I don’t like you no more”. Reuniting In Bruge's Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, ably supported by a truly outstanding Barry Keoghan, and Breaking Bad’s Kerry Condon, it’s the story of a friendship gone sour. Set on the mythical island of Insherin during the Irish civil war, which to the director’s credit is hardly mentioned, Farrell stars as a farmer, who’s described as both a nice guy, and as dull as ditch water, and Gleeson as a musician, and thinker. Lifelong friends, who suddenly find themselves estranged. And brilliantly, we’re never told why.
There are some truly shocking scenes in this. It certainly didn't go the way I was expecting it to go. Let’s just say that there were no happy endings here. There are actually no bad turns in this. The cast are universally brilliant. As already mentioned, Barry Keoghan gives perhaps one of the outstanding supporting performances ever. He actually puts both the leads in the shade. He really is that good, and Condon isn't too shabby either. And there are a host of others that are wonderful.
I’m a massive Beckett fan, and you could best describe this is Waiting For Godot for the modern audience. Which is obviously no bad thing.
This is an outstanding film, and one that everyone should endeavor to watch. In fact it’s so good that I’m going to watch it again right now.
Nothing to be done.
I watched this last night, at the pop up cinema in the Cock Hotel. I'd say it split the room - several people walked out and a couple of women near me as we left called it the most depressing film they'd ever seen. However, I thought (like Gers) that is was amazing. It's the kind of film that the word elegiac was invented for. It's incredibly beautiful with a subtle pallet of colours. The acting is uniformly extraordinary. Even the animals act well.
As Gers states, it's about a failed relationship but if you're an arty wank-fart like me, you can paint all sorts of layers of metaphor onto it. So it might just be about men and how they interact. Or about the desire for some sort of immortality set against the pleasure of just living in the moment. It's also probably about Ireland and the recent troubles (Inisherin is a fictional island off the west coast of Ireland but the word Inisherin literally means the Island of Ireland). The civil war is coming to an end on the mainland but on the island people aren't sure what each side are fighting for. Farrell and Gleeson's enmity builds, from trivial beginnings that those around them can't understand, to a monstrous, escalating nightmare, just as with the Troubles. Farrell's character Pádraic is a happy-go-lucky "nice guy" but the escalating madness takes him down a dark path, a path he intends to follow to the end:
"So, no, we won't call it quits. We'll call it the start."
"To our graves we're taking this"
"Some things there's no moving on from. And I think that's a good thing."
Leaving to one side whether I'm over-interpreting it or not, it's a masterpiece of cinema. Like life, it's funny, it's deeply melancholic, it's beautiful and it's over too soon. I want to see it again.
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