Banshees of Inisherin

The film, now playing in theaters, stars Dubliners Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, who reunite with director-writer Martin McDonagh, with whom they made In ...

“The sunsets and the skies were fantastic and lent themselves to a beautiful piece.” It was a dream to be able to come to these places.” Ultimately, McDonagh says he sought to create one of the most beautiful Irish films in cinematic history. McDonagh says he wanted to “capture the beauty of Ireland in the film and lean into that. The story is dark enough anyway, but we wanted the visuals and the locations to be as cinematic as possible.” For example, the mountainous geography of Inisherin impacts the story. The film would not have been possible without help from the locals on Inishmore and Achill, McDonagh adds. It was so strange and anomalous to have weather that was as consistently beautiful and almost Greek.” Condon adds that filming in Inishmore was like a “spiritual” experience: “The locations and scenery are characters in themselves.” “We came back a few steps from the coastline and found a location on the edge of the cliff to build the house, looking down over one long end of the island towards an ancient monument called Dún Aonghasa. Although the fictional island of Inisherin is unaffected, the tension on the mainland is palpable. The Banshees of Inisherin is set in 1923, just as the Civil War was raging in Ireland. Although he was born in London, McDonagh’s parents are Irish—his mother from Sligo and his father from Galway—and The Banshees of Inisherin pays tribute to the filmmaker’s heritage. “Inisherin is a fictional island, so I didn’t want it to be specifically one place,” adds McDonagh. For starters, the characters Pádraic and Colm were written specifically for Farrell and Gleeson, respectively—two of the most lauded, respected Irish actors working today.

Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, and writer-director Martin McDonagh reunite for a spiritual sequel to their 2008 assassin comedy-thriller In Bruges.

And until it strays off course, it remains a nuanced expression of this idea in the present, causing its characters to curdle and contort as they begin to believe they’re running out of time. As McDonagh tries to put words to his ethereal themes of mortality and remembrance in The Banshees of Inisherin, it winds up reading like an attempt to ground intangible spiritual dilemmas in concrete reasoning and definitive emotional paths. 21, with a national rollout to follow over the next few weeks. All of which makes the story more didactic and moralizing than the first two acts suggest it’s going to be. Colm doesn’t come right out and say it, but his sudden desire to create and to be remembered, like his idol Mozart, feels directly informed by the looming specter of death. The actual violence never touches Inisherin’s shores, and there’s certainly a case to be made that the film’s tale of brother turning against brother is a metaphor for the conflict, albeit a flimsy one. As the story unfolds, the absurdist playwright in McDonagh comes rushing to the fore in a way it hasn’t in any of his films since In Bruges. The Banshees of Inisherin is a return to familiar territory for writer-director Martin McDonagh: It plays like a spiritual sequel to his pitch-black 2008 comedy-thriller In Bruges. But McDonagh can’t quite find the right way to string all his heavy themes together once he enters its final act. He’s checking in on his pal Colm Doherty (Gleeson) to invite him to the local pub for a pint, per their usual routine. Those glimpses imbue the film with a borderline romantic warmth, which cinematographer Ben Davis paints with the dim flickers of candle- and lamplight. This time around, they play much simpler men — a farmer and a musician, respectively — but they have the same anguish as their assassin counterparts, resulting in a film that maintains a spiritual vice grip over its audience, in spite of the charming setting.