Love, Niceness, and THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN
“I don’t want to be your friend anymore.”
Everyone has probably heard some variation of these words at least once in their life - and they feel particularly common between kids on the playground. That’s probably why, when full-grown ColmSonnyLarry offers more or less the same words to his buddy Pádraic Súilleabháin, some folks in the village say “what is he, twelve?”
The words are far from simplistic, though. The way Colm says it to Pádraic, it cuts even harder: “I just don’t like you no more.” Colm says he's trying to focus on his art, using his time to do something that lasts, and "idle chatting" with someone like Pádraic isn't helping him with that. It’s hard to deny that even rejection as simple as this can get your stomach churning and mind swirling instantly. Why don’t they like me anymore? Is it something I did? Is it something they did? Have I changed? Have they changed? Am I unlikeable? Am I worth liking? Does anyone like me? The immediate inner turmoil can eventually implode in flame.
The Banshees of Inisherin captures that existential implosion with wit and tragedy befitting of Martin McDonagh's directorial stamp.
Ever since Three Billboards, I've been fascinated by McDonagh's view of the world - and finally watching In Bruges this year only deepened that fascination. There's an intense cynicism and darkness to his stories that some might even go so far as to call nihilism, but unlike some viewers, I can't say any of them have ever left me fully depressed or hopeless. Amid the rubble of broken relationships and comic absurdity of the pain in McDonagh's work, there's always a glimmer of love and relationship among pathetic people that beckons toward a deeper reality and core human longing. The endings are always just open enough to imagine a path to healing and a path to even greater darkness. McDonagh's relationship to Catholicism is particularly interesting to me, too; he's clearly disillusioned and jaded with the institution, but nevertheless seems unable to escape the pressing moral implications of the character of Christ.
Read the rest on The Rabbit Room.