A 6-minute Review Of The Banshees Of Inisherin. No Spoilers!

The Banshees of Inisherin is a melodramatic movie set on a harsh beautiful island about dead-end lives.

(This review contains a brief analysis of the movie and I’ve kept it as vague as I can while still being able to provide my views. I believe there are no spoilers. But please don’t read it if you want a fresh unbiased experience! By the way, this post contains an affiliate link. If you purchase something through the link, I get a tiny commission at no cost to you.)

My partner suggested we watch The Banshees of “Ed Sheeren” (very juvenile of him I know) a couple of weeks ago because he enjoys the director’s works. 

“Martin McDonagh directed Seven Psychopaths and Three Billboard Outside Ebbing, Missouri too,” he reminded me helpfully. That was all he needed to say. I enjoyed both of those movies, but especially Seven Psychopaths — that was REALLY good. So we watched The Banshees of Inisherin.

Synopsis of The Banshees of Inisherin

The movie is set on a beautiful but remote island off the coast of Ireland. A war is happening on the mainland, and precious little is happening on the island. The most lively part of the island is the pub, the post office/grocery store, and the port.

Right away, the harsh beauty of the landscape and the simplicity of the people’s lives captured my attention. I would live there, I thought. Yeah, I didn’t know better.

Then we follow Colin Farrell’s character, Pádraic Súilleabháin, on a typical day of his life. Pádraic lives with his sister, Siobhán (played by Kerry Condon), an intelligent woman frustrated by the lack of prospects and pretty much everything else on the island.

He drops by his best friend’s house and we discover what was going to drive the plot. Pádraic’s best friend, Colm Doherty (played by Brendan Gleeson), had abruptly decided to stop being friends with him.

Why were they “rowing”? What happens now? 

What happened following the friendship’s demise is a sequence of unexpected and dramatic events that I wouldn’t go into because I think you should watch the movie too.

Get it here:

What’s great about The Banshees of Inisherin?

I’m not a film critic and I’ve never studied movies. All I know is how a movie makes me feel. 

I love the mood and characters in The Banshees of Inisherin, but perhaps a more succinct explanation is I love its storytelling. Great storytelling is like an art. It doesn’t just tell you what happened to who and where, it makes you feel things.

Great storytelling

I love how the movie paints a nuanced picture of an isolated community of people in what appears to be a simple story.

Of course, the story may be simple, but the movie isn’t. 

Martin McDonagh cleverly weaves the characters’ personalities into the story and gave them a lot of depth despite the simplicity of the plot. By the end of the movie, you feel like you’ve known these people personally.

Also, what looked like an idyllic place to live in (if you’re an introvert like me) stopped looking that great after a while. You start to see the problems with living in such a closed-in community.

What happens to the minds of intellects and artists? What happens to Dominic Kearney, the young islander played by Barry Keoghan, who should have so much life ahead of him but this is all he knows? There’s nothing going on, nothing to look forward to. Life is stifling and repetitive. 

Yet life passes by whether they like it or not. 

How do the islanders respond? Maybe they turn against each other. Or they turn against themselves. They find ways to cope in ways they know how, even if it hurts themselves or the people around them.

And right in the midst of them is Pádraic, who appears to not mind this life. But he’s affected anyway. They’re all in it together.

It took me a second to understand Colm’s crazy response to Pádraic’s persistence in reviving their friendship. But once I did, I thought it was perfect.

Colm’s extreme reaction isn’t a result of Pádraic’s actions at all, but an ultimate act of self-sabotage. Pádraic was merely his excuse. 

As someone who also wants to make something out of her life, I feel like I understand why Colm did what he did. It’s painful to not be able to meet your own expectations of who you could’ve been. Maybe it’s better to remove that possibility entirely?

Unfortunately, just as Colm found some relief from himself, he accidentally caused a world of heartache for Pádraic.

It’s about something central to our lives

I love that Martin McDonagh uses the simplicity of that environment and transforms it into something oppressive and bleak. 

It is a depressing film, no doubt. There’s a palpable sense of quiet desperation throughout the entire movie, but the way Martin McDonagh handled it makes it manageable and easy to love.

How did he do it? I kept wondering. I only have speculations about this question.

Without a doubt, good storytelling and a strong cast helped. Told another way, I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed the story as much. 

Despite the time and place setting of the movie being totally different from the life we know, it’s very easy to empathize with the characters because the existential issues are the same. 

We all think about how we’re living and what we want out of our lives. Is this how we want to live? Is there more we can do? At the same time, we’re aware that time is ticking and this life is all we get. 

We get how the characters feel. And the cast being so strong only makes it easier to put ourselves in their shoes.

It has a great cast

Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson’s on-screen chemistry is well-known and played off so well in this movie. We can tell exactly why Kerry Condon’s character, Siobhán, is frustrated. Barry Keoghan nailed his character as well.

I especially enjoy the scenes where Siobhán speaks to Colm. You could tell these two characters share an understanding — the desire for their life to be more. Yet it’s an understanding they couldn’t explain to Pádraic. How do you express something so intangible? It’s brilliant.

Finally, there’s the setting itself. I still can’t say if the harsh yet beautiful and open landscape helped offset or accentuate the desperation, but it’s the perfect backdrop for the movie. 

How many popcorns does it get?

At the end of the day, perhaps I enjoyed the movie because I felt understood. Or perhaps I gathered from it that life always goes on and we’ll find a way to cope, somehow. Either way, it’s a good movie and I highly recommend it.

🍿🍿🍿🍿1/2 out of🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿

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Love movies? You may want to read my list of 9 highly-rated horror movies.