“Some things there’s no moving on from. And I think that’s a good thing.”
So goes the final line of Colin Farrell’s Pádraic Súilleabháin in “The Banshees of Inisherin,” the cinematic masterpiece by writer-director Martin McDonagh that recently earned an Oscars nomination for best picture.
The celebrated Irish playwright — who previously was nominated for Academy Awards for his films “In Bruges” and “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” — here finds himself in familiar territory with the setting, style, and subject matter centered around his native land and his original creative medium: a classical tragedy that is, alternately, side-splittingly funny and deeply reflective at times.
The film explores the broader nature of conflict and war, with its action directly paralleling the Irish Civil War that took place from 1922-1923 following the country’s independence from the United Kingdom. Sadly, its freedom from the crown gave way to an extensive, bloody conflict that would linger for decades to come as the two opposing sides, once allies, clashed over the terms of armistice.
The location itself, the island of Inisherin (“Irish island”), is based on and was filmed in the actual Aran Islands off the country’s west coast, but McDonagh clearly establishes the bucolic backdrop as a microcosm for the entire country at large — with a quarrel between two local residents mimicking the brutal on-again, off-again fighting on the mainland.
Moreover, that particular moment in Irish history may itself be an allegory for examining the universal questions being posed and how they apply to the modern era. And nowhere is it more relevant
