The Banshees of Inisherin: A Kind of Review
From its opening scene, Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin makes you feel like you’re watching Beckett. Set against the backdrop of Ireland’s civil war, the film is as bleak and absurd and tragically funny/sad as any story that aims to capture the complexities of Ireland ought to be.
3 things I think you should know:
It’s best to be in the middle of reading a work of Irish modernism when you sit down to watch Banshees. I’m reading Joyce’s Ulysses.
The landscape is breathtaking, which makes the tragedies of Inisherin and the hope that there’s more beyond it all the more bleak.
The way the feud between Colm and Padraic escalates is equal parts hilarious and horrifying.