Tragedy and comedy are perfectly paired in this latest jet-black offering from Martin McDonagh, which, like the writer-director’s previous film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2018), seems a strong contender for the Oscars’ best picture race. Reuniting the two stars of McDonagh’s 2008 debut feature In Bruges, it’s an end-of-friendship breakup movie that swings between the hilarious, the horrifying and the heartbreaking in magnificent fashion.
It’s 1923, and on the fictional island of Inisherin the sounds of the Irish civil war (“a bad do”) can be heard across the water, providing suitable background noise for the internecine struggles to come. Every day at 2pm, dairy farmer Pádraic (Colin Farrell) calls on his best friend, Colm (Brendan Gleeson), and the two head to the pub. They’re a chalk-and-cheese pair: the former a simple soul who can talk for hours about horse poo; the latter “a thinker” who writes music, plays the fiddle and falls prey to bouts of existential despair. Circumstance has made them inseparable.
