FILM: “THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN” WAILS THE IMPERMANENCE OF EVERYTHING
BY BARNY RIVERA
Humor is so personal. What’s funny to you might be abhorrent to others, and we don’t have a litmus test for jokes. So what counts as comedy these days?
In this content-creating era where anyone with a ring light can be a TikTok comedian, being offensive is as easy as hitting that Post button. Our cultural evolution implores us to decide when it’s acceptable to laugh and to carefully weigh before sharing your laughter in public, because God forbid your sense of humor reveals the darkest parts of your psyche.
If you miss laughing at suffering people without the threat of being canceled, The Banshees of Inisherin invites you to do exactly that.
Written and directed by Martin McDonagh (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) this Golden Globe winner for Best Picture follows the story of Pádraic (Colin Farrell) and Colm (Brendan Gleeson) as two best friends living in a small village off an island in 1920s wartime Ireland.
The title and the setting can lead you to assume that The Banshees of Inisherin is some Oscar-baiting period drama with nuanced performances by dramatic geniuses. You are correct to assume that, and Colin Farrell deserves an Academy Award for Best Actor.
But if you have a wicked sense of humor, you will be laughing at this movie like it’s Bridesmaids.
Consider the premise: one fine day, Colm decides to stop being friends with his best friend, Pádraic. (To which a supporting character reacts: “What is he, 12?”) What follows is an outrageous slow burn of a break-up between two characters who aren’t even lovers, peppered with dry wit from deceivingly simple dialogue. The story takes its time, as if you’re riding a steam locomotive on its way to becoming a wreck.
As with many dark comedies there are deaths to be found in this movie, with the most significant one being the death of Pádraic and Colm’s friendship. Outgrowing people is a common experience for adults, but is it wise to decide that a long-term friendship is not worth continuing? How do you even arrive at that decision? If you do decide that a friendship has reached its end, are you acknowledging its natural death or are you killing it yourself?
For Colm, it was his best friend’s unbearable dullness and non-contribution to his life that made him cut Pádraic away from his equally boring life. He wants to stop being friends with nice guy Pádraic so he can focus on writing music and leaving a legacy, like Mozart. Because it’s not enough to be nice — or so Colm believes — and being nice doesn’t save you a spot in human history. It’s probably no accident that Martin McDonagh made Colm’s bleak worldview eerily similar to those of corporate rat racers.
With a single weary look, Colin Farrell displays Pádraic‘s pain and disbelief to great effect. You feel sorry for the guy, and you shake your fists at the universe for letting bad things happen to good people, then you watch this gentle idiot do idiotic things, and you wonder if humans deserve whatever bad situation we find ourselves in.
The Banshees of Inisherin is a comedy that reminds us how so much of real life is unfunny. Everything dies: relationships, emotions, beliefs. People, obviously. Hope, if we’re not careful. Death isn’t funny. It hurts. Martin McDonagh wants us to laugh at the face of death, because unless we turn death into art, there’s not much else we can do.