Directed by Martin McDonagh. Reviewed by Paul Sorrell

My daughter compared watching this film to being trapped in a disturbing and unpredictable dream induced by eating too much cheese before bedtime! Director Martin McDonagh is at home with the unsettling and the bizarre, as witnessed by his first film, In Bruges — also featuring The Banshees’ protagonists, Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson — where reality is skewed, leaving us unsure of our footing. Both films depict a kind of vengeance that involves the exacting of bloody forfeits.

Set in 1923 on a tiny island off the west coast of Ireland, during the Irish Civil War, the film examines the souring of a long friendship between the happy-go-lucky Pádraic and Colm, a serious musician who finds the other’s small talk and obsession with the minutiae of everyday life “boring”. Threats are made, events escalate, the mood darkens and we know that catastrophe can’t be too far away.

Just as the Civil War acts as an unmissable metaphor for the breakup of the friendship, so the island functions as a symbol of personal and social stresses and tensions that lack an outlet. Relationships are constantly under threat as the islanders are compelled to interact with those they would rather avoid, and escape to the mainland is never as straightforward as it seems, as the experience of Pádraic’s sister and housemate Siobhán, reveals.

If I was to put a genre label on this film it would be black comedy, like In Bruges. While there are plenty of silly gags, and the performance I attended was punctuated by laughter — often wary or shocked — it is the blackness that predominates. Comic stereotypes like the local gossip or village simpleton are set up only to be turned inside out; the island’s policeman is “fiddling his son when he’s not beating up on him”, as Pádraic unwisely informs the patrons of Inisherin’s only pub. Characterisation segues into folktale in the ancient figure of Mrs McCormick, a spooky doomsayer who incarnates the banshees of the title.

Despite the film’s retreat from realism, it is the theme of friendship that holds the action together. In the closing scenes, what seems to be the most destructive act of all delivers a kind of catharsis, potentially reigniting the relationship between Pádraic and Colm through its sheer violence. In a tiny community like Inisherin, it seems foolish, even impossible, to break a longstanding friendship, however unlikely it may seem to outsiders. Opposites need each other even as they repel.

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 278 February 2023: 28