Director, playwright, screenwriter and four-time Academy Award nominee, Irishman Martin McDonagh is back after the Oscar-nominated triumph that was “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” (2017) with the Ireland-set, pitch-black comedy “The Banshees of Inisherin.” The film reunites actors Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, whose performances helped make his acclaimed 2008 neo-noir “In Bruges” one of McDonagh’s very best.
“The Banshees of Inisherin” is set in the 1920s during the Irish Civil War and takes its title from a song composed by one of two longtime friends. The friendship comes to a stark, sudden end when the fiddle player and composer named Colm Doherty (Gleeson) inexplicably announces in the opening that he’s done spending time with neighbor Padraic Suilleabhain (Farrell) because Pedraic is “too dull.” The sensitive, if dull Pedraic is devastated. Occasionally, the people of Inisherin, a lush, green island off the coast of Ireland, see and hear rifle fire and bombs. But for the most part, they do not bother themselves with the fighting. In fact, the violent, local policeman has been summoned to the mainland to attend executions, and he does not care which side is getting executed. He just wants his payday.
Shot by Ben Davis (“The King’s Man”) with music by Carter Burwell (“True Grit”) and featuring Sheila Flitton (“The Northman”) as the neighborhood sooth-saying witch Mrs. McCormick, the film casts a powerful, often funny spell. The sea is a constant presence. Crosses, some of them Celtic, crowd the skyline.
