The Banshees of Inisherin

Martin McDonagh treads familiar turf in his black comedy set in rural Ireland in 1923, but the performances of Brendan Gleeson, Colin Farrell, and Kerry ...

Later, she cautions her brother against all that remains for him in Inisherin: “bleakness and grudges and loneliness and spite.” That is not the wail of a banshee. Sophie is everywhere in the movie, but it’s not just about the quiet blaze of her childhood. “Or is it the other way around?” That note of weary confusion is all too believable; less persuasive is McDonagh’s effort to frame the private hostilities on Inisherin as a parable of the larger conflict. She is funny, but her divinations have the smack of a skit—“I wasn’t trying to be nice, I was trying to be accurate”—and, when Pádraic calls her “you feckin’ nutbag,” it’s hard to disagree. The movie, however, belongs to Condon, familiar to viewers of “Rome” and “Better Call Saul,” on TV, and now, at last, given her cinematic due. The danger of so ominous a setup is that it can harden into the schematic. “The Free State lads are executing a couple of the I.R.A. For Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin, in “The Social Network” (2010), the issue is “Who owns how much of Facebook?” In the case of Tony Stark vs. The turf that is trodden by the latest film, in other words, is not entirely fresh. On the beautiful (and imaginary) island of Inisherin, off the coast of Ireland, where parcels of green land are neatly divided by drystone walls, he shares a little house with his sister Siobhán (Kerry Condon). How refreshing, then, to meet Colm Doherty (Brendan Gleeson), in Martin McDonagh’s new film, “The Banshees of Inisherin,” which is set in 1923. Steve Rogers, in “Captain America: Civil War” (2016), it’s a question of “Should the Avengers submit to an authority beyond themselves?”And, in “Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith” (2005), when Obi-Wan Kenobi sabres off two legs and one arm from Anakin Skywalker, like somebody carving a chicken, there’s no hiding the bone of contention: “Which of us, in signing up for this dialogue, was the bigger Jedi schmuck?”