Our pick: The Banshees of Inisherin | Big friendship pain

Two things particularly distinguish this fourth feature film by Martin McDonagh, a filmmaker born in London of Irish parents, also renowned for his plays and his talents as a playwright.

Marc-Andre Lussier
The Press

First there is the tone – both funny and tragic – that the director of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri maintains throughout the duration of his story. Then there is the main theme, very rarely addressed: the end of a friendship between two men, frankly expressed, and the consequences it entails. What’s more, the way the filmmaker uses to recount this loss of friendship is very astonishing.

Signing his screenplay alone, Martin McDonagh indeed set his story in a small isolated village on a coastal island in the west of Ireland. In this year 1923, the civil war is raging in the country, but the handful of inhabitants of the place receive only distant echoes. There, social life boils down to the pub, where Colm (Brendan Gleeson) and Pádraic (Colin Farrell) have always spent time together every day. However, one day, around 2 p.m., when Pádraic went to pick up his friend, as he had done every day for years, Colm walled himself in at home in silence, without moving from his chair.

Pádraic will have to wait until the next day before knowing what is happening. Colm then empties his bag and calmly tells him that he no longer loves him, that he finds his conversation boring, that he no longer wants to see him. He also orders her not to approach him again. However, no unfortunate event occurred between the two men, no hurtful words were spoken either. Driven by total incomprehension, completely devastated, Pádraic must also deal with the threats of self-mutilation made by his former friend if he does not leave him alone.

More underground themes

Finding the two interpreters ofIn Brugge, his first feature film, Martin McDonagh skilfully modulates a story that makes you laugh and moves. The humor also lies in the dialogues – McDonagh is a brilliant dialogue writer – and in the incongruous situations that inevitably emerge, in a context where the slightest change becomes a big event.

That said, the filmmaker does not hesitate to take a darker path – even violent at times – by addressing more underground themes in passing, linked to the fact that most people living in this out-of-this-world town at the time had to content with their condition, with no real hope of a better life elsewhere.

Colm knows it well, he who, having now reached a more mature age, is looking to live something else, get back to music perhaps… It is also worth highlighting the beautiful presence of peripheral characters, including those whom play Kerry Condon, who plays Pádraic’s sister, and Barry Keoghan. In the role of the “idiot” of the village, the latter delivers a remarkable performance.

Visually splendid, The Banshees of Inisherin, whose title refers to a female creature from Irish folklore, also stands out, of course, thanks to Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson. The two actors obviously share a very real complicity. It feels.

Winner of the best screenplay prize as well as an interpretation prize for Colin Farrell at the Venice Film Festival, The Banshees of Inisherin (The Banshees of Inisherin is the title in French) is showing in its original version with French subtitles.

Indoors

Drama

The Banshees of Inisherin

Martin McDonagh

With Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon

1:54 a.m.

8/10