Friendships dissolve for a litany of reasons. Exasperation. Envy. Fallen scales from gradually or suddenly clearer eyes. Sometimes it’s a last straw; sometimes, an entire bale of hay, parked in plain sight, unnoticed for years.
The reasons for the breakup in “The Banshees of Inisherin,” writer-director Martin McDonagh’s fourth feature, become clear in due course. But they’re not important, not really. Like “some fool of a moody schoolchild” or simply a man protective of his remaining time on his tiny, gorgeously forlorn (and fictional) island off the coast of Ireland, amateur pub fiddler and aspiring composer Colm Sonny Larry, played by Brendan Gleeson, has decided to sever his longtime friendship with his mate Padraic, portrayed by Colin Farrell.
Tending his cows, chatting over porridge in the cottage he shares with his restless sister Siobhan (Kerry Condon), Padraic is an uncomplicated man, dull and known; if he’s known for anything, for his niceness. He can’t fathom why Colm has dumped him as a friend. Now, suddenly, his friends have dwindled to three: his sister; “the village gom,” a tragicomic outsider and the vicious local policeman’s son played by Barry Keoghan; and his beloved miniature donkey, Jenny, who earns every second of screen time.
The increasingly uncivil war between Colm and Padraic, waged against the distant backdrop of the 1922-23 Irish Civil War, unfolds like a lamentable Laurel and Hardy scenario.
Fourteen years ago, Farrell and Gleeson teamed up as a couple of voluble assassins in playwright McDonagh’s first produced full-length screenplay, “In Bruges.” It is wonderful to have them back together again, and every single speaking actor in McDonagh’s latest amplifies the sense of fractious community exemplified by this pretend place.
“Good luck to ye. Whatever it is you’re fightin’ about,” says Padraic, under his breath, walking along the sea and spying smoke from cannons across the water. It’s a self-directed comment, too: He can’t stop asking Colm why the cold shoulder, even after Colm threatens to remove his own fingers, one by one, if his friend-turned-enemy doesn’t shut up.
The standoff turns increasingly lurid and mutilating, which is in keeping with much of McDonagh’s plays and movies. (Sample play title: “A Behanding in Spokane.”) Neither humans nor dogs nor adorable miniature donkeys are free from peril in this patchwork dream of a place.
McDonagh, cinematographer Ben Davis and production designer Mark Tildesley shot “Banshees” all around Ireland’s west coast, from the Aran Islands on up, creating their own idea of a locale. The name “Inisherin” translates from Gaelic to English as “the island of Ireland,” and it’s a sardonic fabulist’s idea of the Emerald Isle, the land of the mean-spirited, petty and perpetually disappointed. It’s a proud literary tradition, going back to John Millington Synge’s landmark play “The Playboy of the Western World,” which provoked a how-dare-you-attack-Ireland ruckus in its 1907 Dublin premiere.
“In Bruges” remains McDonagh’s funniest dark comedy to date, but then, “Banshees” isn’t trying to out-funny “In Bruges.” That said: Desperate to stick it to Colm, Padraic invents a bizarre tall tale about someone getting run over by a bread van, and the way it plays out is reason enough to see the movie.
Farrell is also reason enough. His eyes full of hurt and confusion, his timing razor-sharp but whisper-subtle, he dominates the action in what may be his finest work to date. Gleeson provides rock-steady support for the neatly diagrammed story. Keoghan and Condon tie for most valuable supporting players, breaking your heart in two different ways. Like a supernatural banshee, old Mrs. McCormick (Sheila Flitton, beautifully sinister) appears here and there, against the mist or the stone fences, portending doom. On the nose? Yes. But it works.
The result is McDonagh’s most fully realized work since his breakthrough play, “The Beauty Queen of Leenane,” a generation ago. “Banshees” has its limitations; it’s pretty glib, like everything McDonagh writes, in its mashup of blackhearted laughs and occasional sincerity. He’s akin to the Coen brothers in that regard. He’s also a formidable craftsman and his best lines are pearls. “I pay no attention to civil wars,” Keoghan says at one point. “I’m against ‘em. Wars, and soap.”
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'THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN'
3 stars (out of 4)
MPAA rating: R (for language throughout, some violent content, and brief graphic nudity)
Running time: 1:54
How to watch: In theaters Friday
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