The Ban­shees of Inish­erin – first-look review

The end of a rela­tion­ship is rarely smooth sail­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly when the deci­sion is one made uni­lat­er­al­ly. In 1923, on the remote – fic­tion­al – Irish island of Inish­erin, Pádra­ic (Col­in Far­rell) dis­cov­ers this for him­self when his best friend Colm (Bren­dan Glee­son) declares he no longer wants to asso­ciate with him, seem­ing­ly with­out rea­son. Pádra­ic is under­stand­ably con­fused, then angry, then sad, unable to parse Colm’s sud­den change of heart. He attempts to rea­son with him, much to the cha­grin of his sis­ter Siob­hán (Ker­ry Con­don) who would rather Pádra­ic just tend to his ani­mals instead.

Not con­tent to spend his future hang­ing about with Jen­ny the Don­key and Dominic (Bar­ry Keoghan), the lech­er­ous son of the local con­sta­ble, Pádra­ic con­tin­ues to bad­ger Colm. ​“I just don’t like yer no more,” Colm says blunt­ly, before vow­ing to cut off a fin­ger on his fid­dle-play­ing hand for every day that Pádra­ic con­tin­ues to speak to him.

These stakes may seem a tiny bit low­er than those of Mar­tin McDonagh’s pri­or stage and screen work, which has focused on assas­sins, dog­nap­pers, racist cops, sui­cide and rape-mur­der, but The Ban­shees of Inish­erin cer­tain­ly fea­tures his sig­na­ture acer­bic wit and acute obser­va­tion of the intri­ca­cies of friend­ships. Reteam­ing with Col­in Far­rell and Bren­dan Glee­son – one of the all-time great on-screen pair­ings – McDon­agh has craft­ed an inti­mate study of small-town dynam­ics and the bit­ter­sweet twi­light of a long friend­ship, more focused than his crit­i­cal­ly-acclaimed but dicey Three Bill­boards Out­side Ebbing, Mis­souri, and as his first film set in Ire­land, it serves as an affec­tion­ate folk­tale about rur­al life and social pleasantries.

In a year that has seen Far­rell deliv­er great per­for­mances in After Yang and The Bat­man, it’s McDon­agh who pro­vides his most enter­tain­ing role – Pádra­ic is an affa­ble, sim­ple chap, who likes a chat and a pint, and can’t fath­om Colm’s sud­den change of heart. An expres­sive per­former, Far­rell is able to com­mu­ni­cate fath­oms with just a move­ment of his eye­brows, or the brown-beat­en way he walks along a coun­try path. The sib­ling rela­tion­ship between Pádra­ic and Siob­hán is a sweet con­trast between Pádra­ic and Colm’s antag­o­nism, even as Siob­hán con­sid­ers leav­ing Inish­erin (for not dis­sim­i­lar rea­sons to those Colm has for not want­i­ng to be friends with Pádra­ic any­more). Bar­ry Keoghan, as always, is a sparky agent of chaos, though tragedy lurks beneath Dominic’s chip­per, occa­sion­al­ly pes­ter­ing exterior.

After all, it’s not a McDon­agh film with­out a lit­tle dark­ness, which exists in the form of the men­ac­ing island cop­per Peadar Kear­ney (Gary Lydon) and the omi­nous prophe­cies of Mrs. McCormick (Sheila Flit­ton). On the main­land, war rages between the Irish Free State and the Anti-Treaty IRA – Inish­erin sits at a com­fort­able remove, observ­ing the fight­ing with mild inter­est, but the squab­bles of the towns­folk aren’t so dif­fer­ent. The promise of a bet­ter life might only be a short boat ride away, but there’s some­thing in the famil­iar­i­ty of Inish­erin that Pádra­ic clings to. Colm’s ter­mi­na­tion of their friend­ship dis­rupts his under­stand­ing of the world­ly order of things.

His melan­choly is reflect­ed in Ben Davis’ aus­tere but breath­tak­ing cin­e­matog­ra­phy, reflect­ing the rugged beau­ty of Inish­more and Achill Island (where the film was shot) while Carter Bur­well teams up with McDon­agh again for a score that evokes In Bruges but with a Celtic influ­ence that is under­scored by Colm’s obses­sion with com­pos­ing a new piece of music – now he’s no longer bogged down by Pádraic’s friend­ship. Its del­i­cate blend of wry­ly observed human­i­ty and thought­ful, under­stat­ed visu­als mean that the more dra­mat­ic beats hit hard­er. Even the occa­sion­al moments of gore feel shock­ing for the spar­si­ty with which McDon­agh choos­es to deploy them.

It might be a small­er scale film than his last two Hol­ly­wood projects, but The Ban­shees of Inish­erin is a tes­ta­ment to McDonagh’s gift for dia­logue and the infi­nite­ly watch­able chem­istry between Far­rell and Glee­son – and speaks to the ter­ri­fy­ing thought we’ve all had at one point or anoth­er: what if our friends secret­ly think we’re dread­ful dullards and only hang around out of pity? At least for Pádra­ic, he has a very charis­mat­ic minia­ture don­key to com­fort him.