The Banshees of Inisherin

This being a McDonagh work, it's a comedy of mortification as well as exasperation. It begins with a beautiful overhead shot of the title Irish island, all ...

And as a director, he orchestrates the give-and-take between Farrell and Gleeson with the mastery of someone who appreciates these performers as much as discerning audiences do. As in: Colm tells Pádraic that if the latter continues to talk to Colm, or at Colm, after Colm’s made it clear that the doesn’t want Pádraic’s company or conversation, Colm will cut off one of his fingers. Before he sets out, he makes a remark about Colm to his sister Siobhán ( [Kerry Condon](/cast-and-crew/kerry-condon)), who sarcastically replies, “Maybe he just don’t like you no more.” With 2008’s “ [In Bruges](/reviews/in-bruges-2008),” and now “The Banshees of Inisherin,” the Irish actors, under the writing and directing aegis of frequently pleasantly perverse [Martin McDonagh](/cast-and-crew/martin-mcdonagh), display a chemistry and virtuosic interplay that recalls nothing so much as the maestros of the early 20th-century Comedy of Exasperation. The conflict between Colm and Pádraic serves as a handy metaphor for Ireland’s Civil War at that time, but the movie works best when it doesn’t foreground that metaphor. This being a McDonagh work, it’s a comedy of mortification as well as exasperation.

We'll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Venice Film Festival news every morning. As the peerless sitcom Seinfeld identified as early as ...

[Purchase a Print subscription for 11,12 € per week You will be billed 107,91 € per month after the trial ends](https://subs.ft.com/spa3_uk3m?segmentId=461cfe95-f454-6e0b-9f7b-0800950bef25&utm_us=JJIBAX&utm_eu=WWIBEAX&utm_ca=JJIBAZ&utm_as=FIBAZ&ft-content-uuid=c5811ab4-6f57-4f89-9ef9-3b582a7cb930) [Purchase a Digital subscription for 6,64 € per week You will be billed 39 € per month after the trial ends](https://subs.ft.com/spa3_digital?ft-content-uuid=c5811ab4-6f57-4f89-9ef9-3b582a7cb930) [Purchase a Trial subscription for 1 € for 4 weeks You will be billed 65 € per month after the trial ends](/signup?offerId=41218b9e-c8ae-c934-43ad-71b13fcb4465&ft-content-uuid=c5811ab4-6f57-4f89-9ef9-3b582a7cb930)

After 'Three Billboards Outside Ebbing,' Missouri, Martin McDonagh travels back to the land he knows best.

It’s a curious thing, watching these two rough men in a rough place bicker over something as squishy as hurt feelings over a friendship—and for McDonagh to be the one staging it. He’s trying to build a legacy, some bit of him that will last, that will leave an impression on a world he feels he’s merely stumbling through inconsequentially. Pádraic is bruised but defiant, unable to accept that he could lose his only steady friend in a place as lonely as this. Pádraic (Colin Farrell) is a dim and affable guy who tends to his livestock and spends time every day at the only pub in town. In the past, he’s been the inseparable drinking companion of Colm (Brendan Gleason), older and morose with a touch of the poet in him. Banshees—like The Cripple of Inishmaan, though far less like The Lieutenant of Inishmore—is quaint and quirky, melancholy and distinctively Irish, a better mode for a writer and filmmaker who gets inexact when he takes bigger swings (or travels overseas).

Venice Film Festival audiences liked this reunification of In Bruges alumni Gleeson and Colin Farrell.

More disciplined and less at home to overreach than Three Billboards, The Banshees of Inisherin showcases that clash to good effect. More disciplined and less at home to overreach than Three Billboards, The Banshees of Inisherin showcases that clash to good effect More convincing than the indirect engagement with specific historical events is the general investigation of universal human wretchedness. Brendan Gleeson’s psychotic determination allows in scant hints of the friend he once was, but his dexterity on the fiddle reveals a still undimmed romantic spirit At any rate, it is the smaller interactions between the boldly drawn characters that elevate The Banshees of Inisherin. This raw, bare comedy embraces the tone, the setting and the shape of his breakthrough plays.

Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson are Oscar Contenders for "The Banshees of Inisherin" after Venice Film Festival premiere.

“Banshees” confirms his promise and your heart will swoon in a beautiful exchange between him and Condon by the water that has him pitching a possible future together. The wider public may recognize him from “Eternals” (2021) or his one-scene cameo in “The Batman” as the Joker. Gleeson is a treasured and widely respected actor with over four decades in the biz. I thought the pair’s magic in “In Bruges” (2008) was a one-hit wonder, but with “The Banshees of Inisherin,” the two men have recaptured their old alchemy. In addition to his work in “The Banshees of Inisherin,” the Irish heartthrob disappeared under mounds of prosthetics as the Penguin in Matt Reeves’ “The Batman” then portraying a heroic cave diver risking it all to save trapped children in Ron Howard’s “Thirteen Lives.” If there’s any justice, all those efforts will result in Farrell’s first Oscar nomination. Over 25 years in Hollywood, Farrell has had his share of setbacks and resurrections with his story resembling that of Robert Downey Jr..

Martin McDonagh's latest stars Farrell and Brendan Gleeson as longtime friends on the outs as a war rages on nearby.

Open Are Deeply Symbolic](https://time.com/6210387/serena-williams-us-open-outfit-symbolism/?utm_source=roundup&utm_campaign=20220902) [Barry Keoghan](https://time.com/6151791/the-batman-joker-barry-keoghan/), in an expressive, affecting performance), tries to slip into the space Colm left behind, but Pádraic won’t have it. He gives The Banshees of Inisherin its soul and its beauty. But this is Farrell’s movie: he gives what is surely one of the best performances of the year. But Farrell brings extra layers of depth and mournfulness to the classic McDonagh pattern. Pádraic tries to adjust to the new state of things, tricky in a place so cloistered it’s impossible to avoid your neighbors and erstwhile friends. The parish priest (David Pearse) even tries to intervene from behind the screen of the confessional, but Colm remains unmoved, his face a map of rumpled annoyance, his eyes mostly hidden from the world, as if its sun is the thing that has burned him. Banshees is set in the waning days of the Irish Civil War, on a somber, rocky island off the coast of Ireland, a place where there’s not much to do but scowl at your neighbors and drink at the pub. He is, as one character describes him, “one of life’s good guys.” He loves the animals he tends, especially his miniature donkey, Jenny, a comely sweetheart with alert ears and calm, winsome eyes; he believes Jenny should be allowed in the house, much to the dismay of his sister, Siobhan (the wonderful Kerry Condon). It takes a few tries, but Colm eventually gives him a reason: A fiddler, songwriter and self-described lover of art, Colm has concluded that he can’t stand to listen to any more of Pádraic’s boring talk. Maybe the people who love his work—which includes movies like In Bruges, Seven Psychopaths and, perhaps the worst of them, that extended, belabored wink at heartland America, [Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri—](https://time.com/5016723/three-billboards-outside-ebbing-missouri-review/)talk themselves into being surprised by it, but surely they must be hip to his shtick by now. Farrell’s Pádraic Súilleabháin is in the mind to do the latter, so he tramps through the grassy, stone-stubbled landscape to the cottage of his friend, Colm Doherty (Brendan Gleeson).