The Banshees of Inisherin
Two lifelong friends find themselves at an impasse when one abruptly ends their relationship, with alarming consequences for both of them.
- Released:
- Runtime: 114 minutes
- Genre: Comedy, Drama
- Stars: Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon, Barry Keoghan, Pat Shortt, Gary Lydon, Sheila Flitton, Jon Kenny, David Pearse, Bríd Ní Neachtain
- Director: Martin McDonagh
Comments
- ajgyles - 15 June 2024
technically well made but terrible
Imagine if a lot of very talented people got together and thought "how can I make a movie that hurts people as much as possible? We'll use gorgeous scenery, beautiful music, and powerful acting all for one goal: to make the audience feel bad."
That's this movie.
...and yes, I get the metaphor. It's supposed to be like the Irish civil war. It's not subtle, the movie tells us that over and over. So what? There's no larger point there. It's just "war is bad." It doesn't educate us about the war, or cast it in a new light. It just wallows in the suffering of unrelated people.
Sometimes life is pointless and depressing, yes. But this movie seems to go to great lengths to make it even more so. All attempts to explain the suffering are driven off with malice, like "no, there's no earthly explanation for any of this. God just wants you to be unhappy."
It angers me because this *could* have been a great movie. It's an interesting friendship between two very different men, and sometimes friendships do come to an end. But there's no payoff, no resolution, no meaning at all. It's actually even more meaningless than real life would be. At least in real life we could examine them and go "oh yeah, the old man is senile or an alcoholic or whatever, that explains his behavior." But this movie refuses to give us even a crumb of resolution. It just wants us to suffer.
Next time: watch a dumb blockbuster and then pay the usher to kick you in the balls instead. - hadrienmariaccia - 30 March 2024
The most serene temples are not the ones we think they are.
Inisherin, a small, insignificant Irish island, 1923. Far from the frenzied noise of the 21st century.
Here, people gather daily at the pub to play traditional music on old violins and exchange pleasantries over a pint of brown beer among old friends and neighbors who have known each other forever.
A form of paradise.
Not really.
Colm, an old friend and neighbor of Pádraic, has decided that he no longer wants to speak to him. Pádraic is too shallow, has uninteresting conversations, and prevents Colm from engaging in deeper activities. The latter wants to devote the few remaining years to creating a work of art, mainly musical compositions, for posterity; regardless of Pádraic's distress, who considered him his best friend.
It is amidst the enchanting and severe landscapes of this Irish island that the spectacle of this conflict with a mystical appearance will unfold, the violence of which will oscillate between the absurdity of the determination of a man ready to do anything to ward off death and the tragic solitude of another whom despair will gradually darken to a point of no return.
A beautiful ode to escape, interior escape, but above all a reminder of the limits of withdrawal.
The most serene temples are not always the ones we think they are.
