Barry Keoghan, 29, is a rising star. Despite his young age, his filmography is already very impressive. This is The Killing of a Sacred Deer (The Killing of the Sacred Deer), by Yorgos Lanthimos, where he plays a disturbing teenager, who made him known in 2017. He then shone in the war drama Dunkirk (Dunkirk), by Christopher Nolan.
Recently, he was the deceitful brigand in medieval phantasmagoria The Green Knight (The green knight), by David Lowery, and one of the superheroes ofEternals, by Chloe Zhao. In the series Chernobyl, he was Pavel, the civilian conscript. At the premiere in Venice of The Banshees of Inisherin (Banshees of Inisherin), nominated for the Oscars, the critics especially hailed his performance.
“I love this title, The Banshees of Inisherinwhich is just… so Irish,” Dublin native Barry Keoghan said in a videoconference interview.
In Irish Celtic mythology, the banshee is a supernatural creature of feminine appearance which announces an approaching death with a terrifying cry, but heard only by the person concerned or by one of his relatives. The banshees in Martin McDonagh’s film aren’t literal, though an old lady who seems to relish every misfortune she prophesies approaches.
“When I was little, my grandmother told me stories of banshees wandering the moors,” says Barry Keoghan. Like I said, it’s very Irish. If you hear the banshee, you or someone in your family will soon die. »
Set on an Irish island, the action of the new film from award-winning director Martin McDonagh In Brugge (Welcome to Brugge) and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (Three posters near Ebbing, Missouri), takes place at a time when the country is torn apart by the civil war of 1922-1923. The choice of this fratricidal conflict as a backdrop is not innocent, the film recounting a “pain of friendship” between two men who were almost brothers, precisely. They are Pádraic, a hitherto perpetually content farmer (Colin Farrell), and Colm (Brendan Gleeson), a fiddler who decides one fine morning that he’s had enough of the former — for the record, Farrell and Gleeson s already faced in In Brugge.
Distraught, Pádraic divides his grievances between his sister Siobhán, a brilliant woman who suffocates in these narrow places (Kerry Condon), and Dominic, the son of the policeman who hides many misfortunes under his naive affability (Barry Keoghan).
“What struck me immediately in the scenario, it is its particular tempo, remembers this last. I had never read a screenplay with this kind of fluctuations in rhythm and fluctuations in tone: it’s both very funny and very sad. »
Fact, The Banshees of Inisherin is equally comedy and tragedy. Nevertheless, absolute accuracy is maintained throughout. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri rested on a similar balance.
“The trick was not to play sad when it was sad, and not to play humor when it was funny: you had to be honest, be authentic, always be in the moment”, summarizes Barry Keoghan, who specifies in the same breath: “Dominic is like that, I think. That is to say, he is absolutely and completely honest, all the time. This is one of the refreshing aspects of the film. I mean, the fact that Dominic is perceived as the village idiot, when he is perhaps the one who understands situations and people the best. He is shrewd and sensitive: he is uneducated, but he is intelligent nonetheless. And it has no filter. He does not try to spare the sensitivities of others and says things as he observes them. Even though it may create discomfort, or hurt, it comes from an underlying kindness on his part, I think. »
healthy pressure
Dominic is in this case a golden role, in that he is given several of the best replicas, comic and dramatic.
Moreover, Martin McDonagh, who is at the same time an esteemed playwright, has composed musical dialogues where words, even sentences, become motifs repeated by different characters, with laughter or heartache, as the case may be. .
“It required a lot of concentration. With dialogues so magnificent, so rich, I didn’t want to screw up. It was not easy. Sometimes I needed Martin to stand by me [hors champ], or that he actually plays Dominic for me, between takes. »
At this memory, Barry Keoghan bursts out laughing, seeing in his mind the director who became an actor on and off.
“Martin is very honest, like Dominic. But it adapts to each actor. It allows him to communicate what he wants in a perfectly clear way, and it ensures that everyone intimately understands the intended intention. Only the best filmmakers have that quality, in my opinion. »
On this point, we can trust Barry Keoghan, he who, as we mentioned from the outset, has collaborated with a number of big names: Yorgos Lanthimos, Christopher Nolan, David Lowery, Chloé Zhao, without forgetting Matt Reeves during a fleeting, but memorable, appearance as Joker at the very end of the hit The Batman. This summer, he also held the first male role in Saltburnthe second production of Emerald Fennell, author of the hard-hitting Promising Young Woman (A young woman full of promise).
When we list all these names and point out to him that he obviously chooses his projects carefully, Barry Keoghan blushes, before answering: “Would you mind repeating this list? I still can’t believe it. I consider myself so lucky. It’s the same for my partners: the actresses and actors I’ve been able to work with… I’m so grateful… At the same time, it adds a pressure, a healthy pressure, in the sense that I want to be up to it, honor them. I know it sounds cliché, but the fact is that I’m constantly learning from these pros. I am in perpetual training, really. »
Looking for challenge
On his talented past play partners, Barry Keoghan is on his second collaboration with Colin Farrell after The Killing of the Sacred Deer. The complicity was therefore there, sometimes to the great displeasure of Martin McDonagh.
“All my scenes with Colin were difficult to play, because Colin is hilarious,” explains Barry Keoghan. It’s impossible to keep serious with him. It happened that Martin had to call us to order by saying: “OK, children! We have a movie to shoot!” »
Ultimately, Dominic stands out as the young star’s most moving composition to date.
“I try to find characters that will represent a challenge to play. For example, if it’s a sinister character, I like that there are moments of vulnerability, if not redemption. I like complexity, contradictions… It’s paradoxical because, in Dominic’s case, he’s a character who is completely innocent in his own way. He is only pure soul. To play that, to embody that, that was my challenge. I wanted to prove to Martin that I could do it. I wanted to prove it to myself too. »
Let Barry Keoghan rest assured: he made it.
The film “The Banshees of Inisherin»
hits theaters October 28.