Martin McDonagh, a playwright and the filmmaker behind such place-based dramedies as In Bruges (2008) and Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri (2017), is at home in the omnidirectional grievances of small communities and limited locations. The site of his new existential buddy-comedy-gone-sour, The Banshees of Inisherin, is no different. On the island of Inisherin there’s no avoiding your neighbor, lest maybe you duck behind a stone wall when you see him coming up the road. It’s a fictional name for a real geography, where off the coast of Ireland an interminable gray sky hangs over verdant pastures and dramatic cliffsides. The year is 1923, and volleys of cannon blasts and gunfire from the Irish civil war can be heard booming over on the mainland. On Inisherin, though, things are as they ever were.
Pádraic Súilleabháin (Colin Farrell), a dopily agreeable man of simple pleasures, finishes his daily labor tending to his meager flock of a horse, a cow, and a very consequential miniature donkey named Jenny. As the clock strikes two, it’s off to the island’s sole pub with drinking pal Colm Doherty (Brendan Gleeson). Only Colm doesn’t want to go drinking with Pádraic anymore. Colm’s a prickly bear of a sort with a soft center but an unflappable countenance, and he’s had a change of heart. No more dull chatter. He’s going to focus his time and energy on his…
