Patrick Sullivan, April 1, 1923, at exactly two o’clock in the afternoon (Colin Farrell) the habit of stopping by his best friend Colm Doherty’s house (Brendan Gleason)to go to the bar together, but in response to the appropriate offer, he hears only a suspiciously sullen silence. A moment later, Colm says, “I don’t like you anymore,” and is dragged into the bar and held to account by Patrick. Once – and the end of many years of friendship. The debate will not be an April Fools’ joke tomorrow, in two days, and in three days. But Patrick is not willing to give up so easily (especially since the small island of Inisher on the Irish coast doesn’t have the widest range of friends). But his determination leads to rather unexpected – and bloody – consequences.
The Banshee of Inisherina is Irish Martin McDona’s fourth feature film, and at this stage it’s perfectly clear that the director can create a movie (well, a game) out of literally anything: an hour and a half painting about how one friend doesn’t want to talk to the other anymore, It doesn’t sound like the most exciting sight, but it’s exactly what you can’t tear yourself away from. “Banshees” in general are more like McDonald’s games, with their actions often taking place in small Irish villages where there is an important sense of quiet solitude. This is no accident: Originally, the name “Banshee of Inisherin” (or “Banshee from Inisherin’s Island”) was supposed to be the finale of the director’s “island” trilogy, which began with “The Cripple of Inishmaan” and continued with “The Cripple of Inishmaan.” Lieutenant Inishmore Island”, but remained unfinished.
After the (brilliant) entrances to the Quentin Tarantino realm in Psycho 7 and the Coen Brothers on Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, the tape seems to be returning to its roots somehow. Also talking about the disagreement between the two friends, Banshee brings back the duet of Farrell and Geeson from his first feature film “Lie Down in Bruges,” which paradoxically creates the feeling of meeting old comrades after a long separation.
But in reality this is a movie about rejection and separation – broken friendship, unrequited love and painful loss. The background for clarifying numerous relationships is the fading civil war that flared up after the First World War and the Irish War of Independence (i.e., literally background – gunshots are regularly seen and heard from the shores of Inisherin). It was a clash of two worldviews: Irishmen who wanted to stay on their own were fighting Irish who wanted to stay part of Britain. The conflict between Patrick and Colm is also essentially a conflict of worldviews: one simply wants to live, and the other perceives life as a project whose outcome must be history. Both points of view have a right to exist, but are incompatible with each other. And that’s probably normal: friendships end, people go their separate ways. Another thing is how many burnt huts, physical injuries and deaths eventually resulted. In an ideal world – zero, but we do not live in an ideal world, and indeed there is no island of Inisherin, and there are no banshees on Inisherin (although there is still a mystical old woman heralding death).