Review: The Banshees of Irisherin

Writer-director Martin McDonagh's career has been a bit all over the place since he hit it big with In Bruges. Seven Psychopaths was wobbly at best; Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri did well and featured strong performances, but its reputation has curdled a little over time. The Banshees of Irisherin sees him reunited with In Bruges' double act of Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell; it's also his best film to date.

The year is 1923, the Irish Civil War is winding down, and on the (fictional) island of Irisherin Colm Doherty (Gleeson) has decided he never wants to speak to his (former) best friend Padraic (Farrell) ever again. Padraic is taken aback by this sudden turn of events, and every attempt to find out why only makes things worse. 

There is an explanation: feeling the years tick by, Colm (who's a fiddle player of some renown; students come from the mainland to learn from him) wants to focus on creating something lasting, not idle chit-chat. But for Padraic, whose second best friend is miniature donkey Jenny, and whose sister (Kerry Condon) is also chafing against the small island's limited horizons, chit-chat is the stuff of life. 

Colm eventually lays down an ultimatum. If Padraic doesn't stop bothering him, every encounter they have will result in Colm snipping off one of his own fingers with a pair of sheep shears. Can things go downhill from there? Of course they can, and do.

That central conflict works both as a personal clash between two well-defined individuals and as a metaphor for all number of things. Is it symbolic of the Civil War still flickering on the mainland? The struggle between creativity and the mundane demands of earthly life? A reminder that if you''re going to give up everything for your art, "everything" is an awfully big concept? It's all that and more, without ever feeling laboured.

It's easy to pick a side in the split between friends, but this isn't a film about black and white - unless it involves copper Peader (Gary Lydon), father of local gobshite Dominic (Barry Keoghan) and a nasty piece of work all round. Colm's desire to focus on his art has a touch of vanity to it, and an edge that seems as much about hurting others (and himself) as it is about setting boundaries. Padraic's simple straightforwardness conceals a sharpness of its own; neither man comes out of this looking his best.

The suffocating nature of a small community is on full display here, with petty grievances and barely-concealed sins all around. And yet it's also an extremely funny film, long past the point where you'd expect the laughs to fade; McDonagh is an award-winning playwright (this was originally a play, abandoned years earlier), and his ear for a sharp line or scathing observation is on proud display here.

And yet it wouldn't come together without Gleeson and Farrell, two actors who can project charm and warmth with effortless ease and put that ability to darker use here. They're both performers we want to like, and the script uses that against us. 

It's easy to see why each would have been happy as friends with the other, and painful to see them apart; the few brief moments of kindness between them are the times this film really sticks the knife into audiences, a glimpse of a warm and happy world now lost forever.

- Anthony Morris