The Banshees of Inisherin brings Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell together again some fourteen years after their first collaboration with Martin McDonagh in In Bruges. McDonagh’s work is marked by disaffected male figures, and Banshees continues in that frame. It is a patiently-told rendering of the dichotomy facing the dissatisfied: to linger in mediocrity, or to aspire.
Banshees’ opening draws the viewer into the bleak but beautiful landscape of the fictional island of Inisherin. From over the sea, the camera surveys a mosaic of fractured fields, split by drystone walls, criss-crossed with country lanes, watched over by a statue of Our Lady, before settling on Pádraic Súilleabháin (Farrell) as he walks home. The few encounters that he has on this first of many strolls across his island home belie the underlying loneliness of the setting, which sets the scene for the rest of the film.
