The Banshees of Inisherin

.. and the futility of war.

I have a bad habit of bypassing ‘big’ films until the fuss dies down - I’ve always done it. Last year a friend went to a preview of Emilia Perez and told me it was an astounding cinema experience - the reviews were ecstatic, and then - typically for the social media age we live in - everyone started turning against it. All I see now are the ‘hey - you know Emilia Perez is actually a terrible film’ style of hot-takes from people who just want to seem edgy. My point is - some things need a bit of breathing space and I don’t like anything hyped up.

So as a result, I seem to have blanked The Banshees of Inisherin when it originally came out - it was just TOO well received and TOO celebrated. 9 Oscar nominations - it couldn’t possibly be THAT good. There were a lot of reviews but somehow I don’t remember much real audience buzz, nobody I know mentioned it specifically so I assumed it was one of those films that everyone says is good, that disappears almost immediately. I don’t think it won any Oscars - which just reinforced my decision to give it a miss for the time being. (not that Oscars actually mean anything)

I finally found that time last night and watched the film cold, then did my usual thing, reading up about the production and reviews afterwards. It’s a curious thing, how we all think we are critics now - many of the reviews on IMDB were kind but salty - because we’re ALL critics now. My favourite was ‘good acting but no real plot or exposition - limited character development’. OK…

Banshees is a much, much better film than I expected. Yes - the acting is phenomenally good - there are no weak spots anywhere. It’s a quiet, measured but riveting story that’s much, much bigger than most of the hobby reviewers seem to realise. The civil war on the mainland with its occasional explosions and gunfire is neatly mirrored by the stop-start civil war on the island. A claustrophobic splinter of society crushed by two overbearing authority figures - the police and the church, both of whom are corrupt, thuggish and controlling - and in a brief glimpse where the policeman assists the padre off the boat for Sunday services, we are reminded that they are also working hand in hand. An old woman, the ghoul - wanders like a witch through the film, like something pulled from a Shakespeare or a Greek myth - casting a dark shadow of death, fortelling the future in riddles..

In all wars, it’s the innocent who suffer - with the gentle Jenny being the casualty here - an unintentional but typical victim of the conflict between two unflinching sides, neither of whom is capable of seeing the perspective of the other. It’s incredibly sad that in the final scene, we get what’s probably a truce ‘Thanks for looking after my dog’ - ‘any time’ - but the hatred between two men who were once tied together in a gentle and unshakable friendship will never go away, both men are now scarred by grief, pain and disability. Just like the mainland.

When I saw this opening sequence, with its beautiful music, landscape, rainbows and happy smiling faces, people content with their simple, rustic lived - I just KNEW something terrible was about to happen.

The two strongest performances come from Kerry Condon - the main female character, too intelligent and sensitive to put up with this shit any longer and forced to leave everything behind to become an immigrant/refugee, and Barry Keoghan, one of the finest performances I’ve seen on film in many years. Superficially the village idiot - yet with more insight and sensitivity than anyone else, the widest vocabulary (if anyone actually LISTENED to him - he certainly knew more French) and the burden of hopelessness, no future, no love and a thuggish father who is abusing him - but nobody wants to know. What happens to him is heartbreaking - and clearly foreshadowed early on - but I still don’t see it coming. The saddest part of his story is that nobody cares, nobody will mourn him, and there will be no retribution - it will only ever be ‘Why would a young lad want to do a thing like that - I always said he was an idiot)

One of the saddest lines ever written for film - this lad was the only one with any real inner life, insight, hope or desire - and where did it lead him?

Every review I read did the same thing - just looked for weakness, criticism, and fault - sometimes you just need to watch the film and let it live inside you for a while and allow it tell you what it wants to say. It’s probably the best film about the stupidity of war, without showing a war - I’ve ever seen.

Quick note - all the jumpers were knitted by the same elderly woman - Delia Barry. The song ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’ that Brendan Gleeson’s character composed in stages through the film was written and performed by… Brendan Gleeson. A Banshee is a figure that comes from Irish folklore - a woman who foretells death by a scream. The old woman isn’t the banshee - it’s the violin.