Breaking Free of A Friendship Prison Is Especially Challenging on an Island: The Banshees of Inisherin

It’s a simple, yet largely unaddressed subject matter: when one friend wants out of a long-standing friendship and the other doesn’t. But now, Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin is sure to become part of the definitive list featuring the scant few films (including Sandra Goldbacher’s Me Without You) that acknowledge the all-too-common occurrence. Even if it’s usually attributed to an era in one’s life when “growing pains” are more palpable (i.e., adolescence). Maybe that’s why it’s more “believable” to see friendship rifts in teen-centric fare such as My So-Called Life and Thirteen. The Banshees of Inisherin nevertheless illuminates how and why it’s only too possible for a friendship at one’s later stage in life to deteriorate. Or, in Pádraic Súilleabháin’s (Colin Farrell) case, to get pulled abruptly from him like a ripcord.

The one performing the excision, as it were, is Colm Doherty (Brendan Gleeson). As the older (dare one even say “paternal”) of the two friends, he seems to have an epiphany about the way he wants to spend the rest of his time on this Earth. Which is to say: usefully. He no longer wants to endure the mindless, mostly one-sided chatter that he’s put up with for all these years as Pádraic’s best and ostensibly only friend. Not that he can fully be blamed for that, what with Inisherin being a small (fictional) island off the coast of Ireland… making it an especial challenge to ditch someone when you suddenly realize you can’t handle their inferior intellect any longer.

The time and place of The Banshees of Inisherin is, in McDonagh fashion, as integral to the story as the characters themselves. Setting the year in 1923, at the end of the Irish Civil War that cropped up right after the Irish War of Independence from Britain, the conflict that keeps escalating on the mainland is suddenly being mirrored in the schism between Colm and Pádraic. One that happens instantaneously with the opening of the film, as Pádraic goes to Colm’s house to see if he’s coming ‘round to the pub. Refusing to answer the door, Colm merely sits in his chair in the center of the room smoking a cigarette as Pádraic peers in at him through the window. Despite his pleas about going to the pub, Colm continues to ignore him until he leaves.

Flummoxed by this cold shoulder, Pádraic returns to his own modest abode, where a woman one might initially assume is his wife is in the midst of hanging laundry. That assumption is soon debunked when Siobhán (Kerry Condon) demands, “What are you doin’ home?” When he doesn’t reply, she adds, “Brother, what are you doin’ home?” So it is that we’re made aware of the Finneas O’Connell/Billie Eilish dynamic at play, with the two sharing a room together and Pádraic being dependent upon Siobhán to act in the housewife role while he tends to the animals. Among them being a precious and too-pure-for-this-world donkey named Jenny. Her sweetness equaling to “dumbness” (much like the eponymous, Christ-like donkey in Au Hasard Balthazar) is yet another foil in the script, designed to represent Pádraic’s own genial disposition. Before Colm ends up twisting and contorting it with his cruelty. And yet, those who might empathize with Colm’s stance on the matter can understand his reasoning in abruptly deciding to jettison a dead-weight friendship. One that, as he says, doesn’t “help” him in any way—more specifically, doesn’t elevate him intellectually in any way.

Colm, like most creatives living in an era before major signs of full-tilt climate catastrophe served as a portent of human extinction, is of the belief that spending his time making art is more worthwhile. That this will be the key to an enduring legacy. Not just plodding along through life being “nice” for the sake of avoiding hurt feelings. Who has time for such bollocks when they’ve got an artistic output to focus on? His being musical composition via the fiddle (again, this is Ireland).

But Pádraic truly can’t fathom this about-face Colm has exhibited. Except, as he drunkenly notes one night, maybe it wasn’t an about-face. Maybe Colm was like this (read: an arsehole) all along, and only “tolerated” Pádraic because it’s fairly impossible to avoid someone on a small island. Colm, refusing to give in to that geographical imprisonment any longer, warns Pádraic that every time he keeps talking to or approaching him like some pathetic beaten lapdog coming back for more agony, Colm will remove one of his fingers with sheep shears. The disbelief in Pádraic’s eyes when he says this is quickly mitigated by the appearance of one of Colm’s digits on his doorstep the next time he tries to communicate with him.

Such commitment to extricating Pádraic from Colm’s life causes great pain and suffering to the former, who had so few enjoyments on the island to begin with—apart from his animals and the company of his sister, who, like Colm, is too learned for a place like this, and it’s starting to kill her inside. That’s why she takes a chance on applying for a librarian job on the mainland—one that she actually gets chosen for, as the local gossip, Mrs. O’Riordan (Bríd Ní Neachtain), informs her after opening her letter. As Siobhán leaves the general store with the letter in hand, Mrs. O’Riordan calls out, “It’d crucify him, you leavin’!” Here, again, the Christ-like nature of Pádraic, reflected in the donkey as well, is highlighted before we see the complete shift in Pádraic’s personality from happy-go-lucky and affable (qualities that are pronounced in the opening scenes of him smiling and waving to everyone he comes across on the island) to embittered, enraged and vindictive. His innocence totally lost by the midpoint of the film, as even Dominic (Barry Keoghan), the island’s supposed “dimmest” resident, regards him as being among the worst—just like every other miserable denizen of Inisherin.

At the beginning of The Banshees of Inisherin, when Pádraic still has his innocence intact, he hears gunshots in the distance of the mainland, remarking to himself, “Good look to ye, whatever it is you’re fightin’ about.” The wish of good luck is as much for himself and his own defunct friendship as it is for the degenerating relations among Irish people. This also ties into Pádraic’s pub argument about niceness being the best and most enduring legacy. Rebuffed by Colm, who tells him that only art lasts (to reiterate, this is because climate change wasn’t then a fear). That people from centuries ago are only known and remembered for what they contributed in fields like music and poetry. That once everyone who knew Pádraic and Siobhán dies, their “niceness” will be forgotten. What’s the point in being “nice”? A question also demanded by the warring factions of Ireland rowing in the distance.

As Pádraic grows more and more alienated and disillusioned, he becomes as committed to the cause of his discord with Colm as the IRA is to its own with the Provisional Government of Ireland. Which is why, when Colm notes in an ephemeral moment of kindness, “Haven’t heard any rifle fire on the mainland in a day or two. I think they’re comin’ to the end of it,” Pádraic replies, “I’m sure they’ll be at it again soon enough, aren’t you? Some things there’s no movin’ on from.” He pauses and looks over emotionally at Colm to conclude, “And I think that’s a good thing.”

Thus, his character has fully mutated into a hardened, unforgiving fear (the appropriate word in Irish for “man”). Who will not rest until he expels the friendship in a far more final way than Colm had imagined. For just as the Irish infighting that began in 1923 has persisted over all these decades—amid illusory periods of “peace”—so, too, will the infighting between Pádraic and Colm. Until someone finally loses their life over it.