The Banshees of Inisherin is set in the early 1920s, during the Irish Civil War, on a remote island off the coast of Ireland. But throughout the movie, all I could think of was how much this place reminds me of Twitter.
Just like that social media black hole, Inisherin is a community running on toxicity, ignorance and bad vibes, filled with nosy gossips, perverted guys, asshole cops and people who basically don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. At the center of all this are two friends, Colm (Brendan Gleeson) and Pádraic (Colin Farrell), who have an abrupt falling-out. It seems Colm has grown tired of his colleague’s dim-witted but decent demeanor, opting to spend more time composing songs and rounding up other musicians to play at the nearby tavern. This sends poor Pádraic into an emotional tailspin, and he spends most of the movie trying (and failing) to get back in his ex-pal’s good graces. Unfortunately, Colm lets dude know he would literally rather cut off his fingers than kick it with him.
After pissing off a lot of Americans with the divisive (and, in my opinion, misunderstood) Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, writer-director Martin McDonagh sticks to his home turf — the British Isles — with Inisherin. With vivid help from cinematographer Ben Davis, he creates a picturesque portrait of two men at odds with each other, while the sounds of war are popping off on the mainland. Conflict is all over the place — no one really knows how it got to this point, and it seems things will get worse before they get better.
Of course, McDonagh had to once again pair up Farrell and Gleeson, who played bickering-buddy hit men in the director’s 2008 feature debut In Bruges. Both actors pull off looking like they’ve been around each other for so long, one of them would inevitably want to distance himself from the other. Although Farrell plays the more sympathetic of the two — a needy yet likable lummox — Gleeson also makes us feel for his character. He’s someone who’s clearly going through some things, and would like to be left the hell alone while he’s going through it.
With Inisherin, McDonagh again goes to morbid lengths to tell a black-comic parable about the chaos that ensues when people lose their compassion for their fellow man. Colm and Pádraic’s “breakup” affects other people, including Pádraic’s levelheaded lass of a sister (Kerry Condon), who seems to be the only sane person on the island, and troubled local boy Dominic (Barry Keoghan) who seems to be the least sane.
I’m quite certain McDonagh wasn’t trying to make a period piece that reflects how batshit-crazy our civilization has gotten ever since tweeting came into our lives. But I’ve seen friendships get dismantled online for whatever reason, and Inisherin’s central conflict reminded me how swiftly a relationship (especially a relationship that’s mostly played out on the internet) can disintegrate when people don’t see eye to eye.
Gleeson and Farrell play the types of people I’ve seen on the interwebs all too often. Colm longs to do something meaningful with his life, eventually distancing himself from “nice” associates like Pádraic, who is content chugging pints, talking about mundane matters and hanging out with his pet donkey. Since social media is filled with folks who are either too self-serious or not self-serious enough (and each party usually condemns the other for it), Gleeson’s and Farrell’s characters seem more like social media avatars. And much like those on social media, they almost destroy themselves and each other in order to prove how right they are. Even though there’s not a smartphone in sight.
The Banshees of Inisherin could very well be the best movie ever made about how social media has warped our lives.
