There’s something about The Banshees of Inisherin that feels a bit unreal. Maybe not just something; a lot, perhaps all of it. It starts from the moment you see dull old Padraic marching across the green hills of his unspoilt home with an enormously gormless look on his face. From that point, you know something is up.
Pádraic is played by Colin Farrell, someone who can try to cover himself in as many layers of tediousness as he likes but will still exude hot sex. The backdrop, too, an Ireland that may never have existed and certainly annoys some who live in the actual version, is just too bucolic for its own good. Every single Inisherian, meanwhile, appears to be both dumb as a rock and possessed of lightning-quick wit. And that’s before we get to the bloke who is so desperate to be left alone to the play the fiddle that he starts hacking off his playing fingers.
