A legend in the theatre, Martin McDonagh's film career has been patchy at best; close to sublime with "In Brughes" and "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" and almost irredeemably bad with "Seven Psychopaths". At least until now, since McDonagh's new film isn't just the best thing he's done on screen but very possibly the best thing he's ever done.
On the surface, "The Banshees of Inisherin" is a very simple affair with a plot that could have been written on the back of an envelope. The setting is the ficticious island of Inisherin off the mainland of Ireland. The year is 1922 and the Irish Civil War is raging. Padraic, (Colin Farrell) and Colm, (Brendan Gleeson) are seemingly best friends until one day Colm tells Padraic he no longer wants to be his friend, that he finds him 'boring', and so what begins as a dark comedy worthy of Beckett or indeed the McDonagh who gave us "The Beauty Queen of Leenane" turns slowly but inexorably into a tragedy worthy of Ibsen and dealing with such themes as loneliness, depression, masculinity and friendship and with an ending as sad as any I've seen in the cinema, (though others may see it differently).
Of course, it all could just as easily have fallen on its slightly absurdist face. Here is a scenario that could have gone any which way; McDonagh is hardly known for his subtlety and yet he never puts a foot wrong. By the time we get to the last act you could hear a pin drop in a packed cinema.
It's also magnificently acted both by Farrell and Gleeson in career-best performaces, both underplaying to the extent that they totally disappear inside their characters and there is a third magnificent performance from Barry Keoghan, (please, just give him the Best Supporting Actor Oscar now), as Dominic, ostensibly the village idiot he may just be the most intelligent person on the island and that is his tragedy; such intelligence can't be contained especially when it goes unrecognized. A masterpiece.
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