Bren­dan Glee­son and Col­in Far­rell on The Ban­shees of Inisherin

Two Irish actors at the top of their game, Bren­dan Glee­son and Col­in Far­rell have worked with direc­tors includ­ing The Coen Broth­ers, Yor­gos Lan­thi­mos, Michael Mann and Justin Kurzel. Their 2008 col­lab­o­ra­tion with Mar­tin McDon­agh, In Bruges, was the begin­ning of a beau­ti­ful work­ing rela­tion­ship between the three, and final­ly they reunite in The Ban­shees of Inish­erin, which con­cerns the friend­ship break-up between gruff fid­dle play­er Colm (Glee­son) and hap­py-go-lucky farmer Pádra­ic. It’s a melan­choly reflec­tion on war, art, and the nature of despair, anchored by their excel­lent per­for­mances, with Far­rell win­ning the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at Venice Film Fes­ti­val. We spoke to Glee­son and Far­rell dur­ing the Dublin leg of their press tour about artis­tic lega­cy and shoot­ing on loca­tion in their homeland.

LWLies: How did you two meet for the first time, pri­or to mak­ing In Bruges?

Bren­dan Glee­son: A year pri­or to film­ing In Bruges I met Col­in at the Chelsea Hotel in New York–

Col­in Far­rell: What were you doing there? Were you work­ing or something?

BG: I can’t remem­ber. Mary [Brendan’s wife] was around, I remem­ber that. It was the year after Domh­nall [his son] had been in The Lieu­tenant of Inish­more and I was try­ing to get this film made, an adap­ta­tion of this book At Swim-Two-Birds, by Bri­an O’Nolan, I was spend­ing way too much time try­ing to get that made. I talked to Col about doing it, and we just struck a chord from the very begin­ning. I just loved the bones of the man. There was some sort of soul kin­ship that just worked. So we didn’t have to think too hard about it after that. Once In Bruges came along, it grew from there.

What are your mem­o­ries of mak­ing In Bruges?

CF: I remem­ber how hands on it felt and how the line between cast and crew was incred­i­bly blurred to the point that it was almost non exis­tent, and it felt like that on Ban­shees too. Maybe even more so on Ban­shees, because both of us had worked with a lot of the crew. Some of the first gigs I did, from Bal­lykissan­gel to Ordi­nary Decent Crim­i­nal – Gary Lydon was in Ordi­nary Decent Crim­i­nal, some of the actors were in Bal­lykissan­gel – and some of the crew the make­up, the hair.

It’s such a com­mu­nal expe­ri­ence, bring­ing the Mar­tin McDon­agh sto­ry to life. I think it’s the same as well with some of his the­atre, that he tends to hire the same actors over and over again because he feels a sense of trust, he feels a sense of kin­ship him­self. And he also knows what peo­ple are capa­ble of. But there is a kind of famil­ial aspect to work with Mar­tin. I remem­ber pick­ing up a cam­era and you know, shoot­ing a scene in Bruges, and myself car­ry­ing the cam­era about two or 300 yards down the road to shoot the next scene. Even though the bud­get was like 10 or 15 mil­lion. I mean, it wasn’t a cheap film. It all felt very hands on and like every­one was so will­ing, from a place of love, to do jus­tice to the word that was writ­ten on the page.

BG: Yeah, and I remem­ber the rehearsal peri­od for Ban­shees was a reaf­fir­ma­tion of the trust that we had felt before. If any­thing we dis­cov­ered three weeks of rehearsal wasn’t enough.

CF: I thought it was fool­ish, to be hon­est with you, three weeks, I thought it was too much. Nor­mal­ly you only get–

BG: Three days.

CF: Yeah. Exact­ly! And you want to keep some of the mate­r­i­al fresh for the set, you don’t want to go over it too much. But with Mar­tin, by the sec­ond week, you’re going God, it’s still speak­ing to us. You ask one ques­tion with Martin’s mate­r­i­al, and you think you come up with an answer, but the answer you think you have actu­al­ly births four or five more ques­tions, and it kept going like that…the more we asked, the more the mate­r­i­al gave us, and by the time we got to set we felt we had a decent foun­da­tion. Famil­iar­i­ty breeds con­fi­dence but there’s still so much to be unearthed.

You shot on loca­tion on Inish­more and Achill Island – how did that enhance the sto­ry­telling experience?

BG: I was inter­est­ed in the dif­fer­ence between us and the tourists who came in on the fer­ry in the morn­ing and then they went off on the fer­ry in the evening. We got to stay and we stayed there for a long time. It was in our bones in a way, we felt a part of the island in a way that wasn’t touristy. They made us feel of the island, and we felt we had a legit­i­mate func­tion there. You can’t be in that land­scape and not feel the pow­er of com­mu­ni­ty with­in the peo­ple and feel the pow­er of the ocean. And just that the liv­ing heart, the hard­ship of liv­ing there, if you actu­al­ly have to make a liv­ing from it. It just became infused. It was like that with Bruges too. They’re very much char­ac­ters with­in the films.

How did Mar­tin approach you about Ban­shees of Inisherin?

CF: Sev­en years ago was the first time I got an email from Mar­tin, who is very eco­nom­i­cal in lan­guage, say­ing, ​“Hey fel­la, wrote this thing, have a look at it, let me know what you think.” And it was called The Ban­shees of Inish­erin at that stage, it was the third in a tril­o­gy of sto­ries. And it was I thought it was bril­liant. But it was a lot more plot-dri­ven. There was a lot more vio­lence. There was a big shootout at the end and it was super dra­mat­ic. The civ­il war didn’t just exist as a, albeit hor­rif­ic, abstrac­tion in the dis­tance, it came to the island. So it was a big­ger sto­ry in that way.

But Mar­tin decid­ed that it wasn’t good enough, and he didn’t want to do it. Then about three years ago or four years ago, he sent the ver­sion that he revis­it­ed and the first two min­utes stayed the same, with him [points at Bren­dan] say­ing ​‘I don’t like you no more, I’m not going to be friends any­more.’ That remained the same, but then the rest of the film unfold­ed in a much more inti­mate way. I think Mar­tin just leaned into the depths of sad­ness, and the despair that was at the core of these men’s lives. It’s just his despair at the begin­ning, but despair being as infec­tious as it can be, is also mine by the end. You know, I’m glad Mar­tin rewrote it because the film as it stands now, com­pared to what he wrote, is slight­ly less cool per­haps but cool wasn’t what we were going for. It became more dis­turb­ing and it became more ten­der and personal.

What does it mean to you to be mak­ing a film like this, which is hav­ing this huge glob­al release, but at its core, is very much about Irish his­to­ry and Irish culture?

BG: The Civ­il War is the con­text of the film and I’m famil­iar with that, as it’s 100 years since the war and I just fin­ished a voiceover for RTE on a pro­gramme that exam­ines the Civ­il War. It’s tak­en a cen­tu­ry for us to be able to address it. It’s been very wound­ing and very divi­sive. We weren’t taught about it in school. So now we’re final­ly fac­ing it as a nation, and it’s more than time to face it. Peo­ple can find a truth on both sides of this rela­tion­ship, and there was some ter­ri­ble tragedy on both sides. But the nature of iden­ti­ty is mas­sive in the Civ­il War, and it’s mas­sive in Ban­shees, and your sur­vival as some­body that is inte­grat­ed with­in yourself.

I fear Ukraine could be put in a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion, if they have to par­ti­tion, and it’s every­where you look, like the civ­il war sit­u­a­tion in Amer­i­ca, where you can actu­al­ly shoot your broth­er, your cousin, your father, because the war informs some core ele­ment of who you are. It did inform me – the fact that we did shoot each oth­er across the main­land – with this movie because it’s about this idea of ​‘I am this per­son, this is who I have to be at what­ev­er cost.’

Kerry’s char­ac­ter, Siob­hán, calls it pid­dling dif­fer­ences. What I learned, bring­ing it back to the Civ­il War, what’s a pid­dling dif­fer­ence to an out­sider, is fun­da­men­tal to the per­son involved. And it’s the same in rela­tion­ships. Some­body once told me that in a rela­tion­ship, ​‘Nobody is the full orange. And it depends that the slices that are miss­ing – if you can live with the slices that are miss­ing from the oth­er per­son, and under­stand the slices that are miss­ing in you, you’ve got a shot at some­thing.’ But if the pieces that are miss­ing are cen­tral and can’t be lived with­out, you have no choice but to sev­er. I feel that’s the way it is some­times. Some things are too cen­tral to be able to make up the difference.

Colm is very pre­oc­cu­pied with the idea of cre­at­ing some­thing that lives on after he’s gone. As artists, how do you feel about the prospect of your legacy?

BG: As an actor you’re try­ing to con­nect the writer with the audi­ence, that’s real­ly what you’re doing. And with­in that, then there is an expres­sion of your own self, but real­ly that’s what you’re try­ing to do. And arts gen­er­al­ly, as a func­tion with­in soci­ety – the French put it at the very core of who and what they are, in a way that I con­tin­u­al­ly want the Irish states to embrace it as an essen­tial, not an added extra.

CF: Yeah, like fund­ing the arts.

BG: Yeah. Dur­ing Covid, we were actu­al­ly called essen­tial work­ers for the first time, and we were allowed to keep mak­ing tele­vi­sion and movies because it was felt we were essen­tial to the well-being of peo­ple. They need peo­ple to be trans­port­ed from being iso­lat­ed and unable to com­mu­ni­cate. What I want in terms of lega­cy is to feel that you’re mak­ing an impact some­how. I love that this film will live for how­ev­er long, and then it will con­tin­ue to make a con­nec­tion. You’re buy­ing into a kind of a stream of human expres­sion, and that to me is important.

CF: Yeah, if you can draw a line of con­nec­tion in the imme­di­ate between your­self and the mate­r­i­al, that’s the place to start. Not every time that I go to work do I feel that con­nec­tion, and that depth of feel­ing, and the kind of provo­ca­tion of thoughts that I felt work­ing on Ban­shees, and In Bruges, and a cou­ple of oth­er things through the years. It’s the excep­tion more than the rule, or has been in my 20 years of being an actor. If that’s where you start, with your first con­nec­tion being with the writ­ten word, the mate­r­i­al. And then after that, you talk to the direc­tor, you con­nect to the direc­tor, and then the direc­tor talks the wardrobe, and then it goes out. Every­one gets connected.

If the crew are, say hold­ing the boom or micro­phone and [imi­tates yawn­ing] you’re kind of fucked. Because you want the con­nec­tion to be there the whole way through. If it con­nects to the crew, then there’s a good chance, once an audi­ence expe­ri­ences it, it’ll con­nect to them. And then the rest is out of your con­trol. I would love this film, and a few oth­ers that I’ve done, to stand the test of time, how­ev­er long that time may be. But as Bren­dan said, it’s about con­nec­tion. Ini­tial­ly, the puri­ty and the hon­esty of con­nect­ing your­self and hav­ing curios­i­ty and a burn­ing desire to get beneath the writ­ten word.