Quick-Thoughts: Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)

Dull or war. The island of Inisherin is as bothered of a place as is its simpleton residents who perfectly elapse the time drinking pints at their one pub, herding their farm animals across every homogeneous neighbor abode, and conversing within the topical confinement of this intrinsically regimented cycle over and over again — say from the occasional war that can be sought just across the ocean. Not soon after though does this “simpleton” world quickly become fable: in the matter of just a beeline request, one man tells another that he no longer wants his company, as simpleton at long last can do no more for this sole Inisherin.

The told man, on the other hand, is conned rather enlisted out of simpleton because of this ex-best-friend’s erratic maneuver. It gets him to finally see that the daily papers he reads are full of unforgettably bilateral tales in the making exclusively happening on foreign soil, Inisherin’s window into outside affairs corrupting the peace of its simpleton environment. The two (like the generals across seas) want to believe that good is no longer measured by “kindness”, but by “immortality”, and in other words by “consequence”. In spite, sometimes kindness still can’t be helped.

Thus, the simpleton town can be remembered now, but only by means that it spiraled some of its people into further skepticism when having to defend it for a change. Fictional Inisherin will live on with real meaning for foreigners like us who hear time and time its tale, but for the fictional folk involved, it needed letting it go a little for such to even occur. To be a “somebody” to everybody requires giving away territory (sometimes quite literally) from your own fecking self, and inevitably, others’ fecking selves. And yet, that’s the fight you’re willing to make for simpleton, to prove its importance by tarnishing its once unexceptional harmony with rather unexceptional bedlam.

Verdict: B

2022 Ranked, Martin McDonagh Ranked

“The Banshees of Inisherin” is now playing in select theaters.