Martin McDonagh

• Irish playwright, screenwriter and director
• Films: In Bruges, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and Seven Psychopaths
• The Banshees of Inisherin has been nominated for a massive nine Oscars!

The Banshees of Inisherin

• about a conflict between two characters: Colin Farrell plays Padraic and Brendan Gleeson plays Colm
• friends for a long time in a very small, isolated community on the island of Inisherin off the coast of Ireland
• the effect this breakdown of the relationship has on the people that surround them becomes the substance of the story, as well as the effect it has on the two characters themselves
• nominated for: Best Actor for Colin Farrell, Best Supporting for both Brennan Gleeson and Barry Keohgan, Best Supporting Actress for Kerry Condon, Best Directing, Best Screenplay, Best Picture, Best Score
• similar to In Bruges – McDonagh is a master of dark, tense relationships between two central characters – Banshees has brought back the same two main actors, veterans and brilliant at their craft
• dark, comedic plot that is also kind of light – one of the reason McDonagh’s films and plays are so effective

Dialogue

• dialogue is the bedrock of his stories, kind of obvious being that he’s a playwright first and foremost
• many of his films feel and read like a stage play – concentrated on a core body of several characters, and usually two main actors with a few supporting characters and a small ensemble cast – the dialogue is so important because it’s about what unfolds between the characters that we’re so interested in
• use of repetition to create comedy and also layers of meaning – when we are first introduced to Padraic, it’s with the repetition of a question about whether he’s rowing with a friend – he can’t understand why his friend suddenly doesn’t want to talk to him – the exchange reveals so much about who Padraic is and the other characters he’s talking to with a limited vocabulary
• dialogue carries the whole story, but the visuals are also incredible – beautifully filmed beautiful landscape and the scenery does wonders, but it’s the dialogue that really tells us what’s happening and moves the plot along and shows us who these characters are

Dark Comedy

• Martin McDonagh creates stories that keep us on the edge of our seats but also elicit out loud laughter
• characters are larger than life, full of lots of different dynamics, very emotive and often quite confrontational but in very different ways
• beautiful tension between Gleeson and Farrell
• Gleeson plays yet another surly, hard to read character, and yet a completely different character to In Bruges, and therefore a different effect on the audience – conveys this with subtle, quiet tension and also a bit of eccentricity – his character is a musician trying to write to music and a bit of quirkiness comes out along the way
• this darkly comedic vibe exists between the two characters because they’re both a little bit quirky and they’re both a little bit tense – their relationship breakdown in a very small community has a powerful effect on the people around them
• in true Martin McDonagh style, things are taken to the extreme
• he tends to favour a certain type of violence in each of his different stories – in In Bruges it’s the gun, in The Hangman it’s the noose, in The Banshees of Inisherin it’s something else altogether – it is quite confronting and it has a very emotive and confrontational effect on the audience – it serves to heighten the tension but our disbelief which is reinforced through the stakes of his comedy as well

Foreboding and Symbolism

• at the start of his stories there is something that the audience sees that hints at something intense that will happen along the way, something that will be of consequence to the characters and the climax of the film
• it happens really effectively with the supporting character of Dominic who’s played by Barry Keoghan
• Barry is a younger member of the community – he wants to be friends with Colin Farrell but he’s also unsure about that character’s motivations
• when we’re introduced to Dominic it’s with a prop – he’s carrying a stick with a hook on it and he actually says to Padraic I wonder who would want this/what is this for/I wonder who would use a stick with a hook on it?
• so Martin McDonagh blatantly draws our attention to this object and then we forget about it until the end and the threads are coming together and we start to understand where he’s going with it
• it becomes really significant to Barry’s arc and where he ends up at the end of the story, and also what happens to the community
• it’s a clever way way of using symbolism and foreboding to drive the narrative forward and bring it to a bookend
• we see it in In Bruges with the use of the gun, but also particularly with the clocktower that they try to climb at the start and then at the end that comes back – and in The Hangman it’s illustrated by this hangman’s noose in a closet to the side of stage

Fabulism and Myth

• there’s always a moment that’s a little bit heightened, a little bit surreal, or more beautiful or poetic
• in Banshees it’s represented by a character that turns out to be the banshee of Inisherin and that character comes up throughout the story but it’s only in retrospect that you see what’s happening there
• also The Banshees of Inisherin is the title of the song that Brendan Gleeson is writing so it’s drawn through the plot in that way as well as part of the overarching narrative, and in the score
• Carter Burwell the composer has been nominated for an Oscar – the music is incredible, blending choral and orchestral, and different layers of sound to create quite an ethereal backdrop that’s also relevant to what’s going on
• also the cinematography – at the start we’re brought into the island through the clouds and at the end we come back out again so the whole story has a fable-like quality as if maybe it’s real or maybe it’s not it
• another elements is that it’s set during the Irish Civil War and so it parallels the conflict between the two characters with what’s happening on the mainland of Ireland and the tension that creates – a lot of the characters on Inisherin don’t seem to care about the conflict on the mainland while people are dying and being executed – almost like McDonagh’s making this underlying point about how domestic issues tend to absorb us a lot more than what’s actually going on in the wider world – it makes us feel quite separate to the real world because this island is quite rustic and remote so we feel this fable, mythic quality to the story

Themes

• tells the stories of human nature with a limited cast of characters that has reference and reflection to society
• a lot of reviewers haven’t picked up on what I think is actually the central theme of this of this film – the tension between Art and life
• Brendan Gleeson’s character Colm wants to do something meaningful, compose something beautiful with the time he has left – so he severs ties with his friend Padraic
• all Padraic can see is that his friend has left him without any warning or any kind of indication that it was going to happen
• a very domestic drama happening on one side but also this quest for beauty and art on the other
• perhaps Martin McDonagh is asking us to consider the tension between those two things – between creating something big and long-term, an enduring legacy of art that influences and impacts the world on a larger scale, and that conflict with domestic life and about how those things seem to conflict but also to reflect on each other and and inform on each other
• if you look closely you’d actually see that coming through in a number of Martin McDonagh’s works
• Colm also chooses to self-sabotage in a bizarre way that’s also trying to to send a message to his friend but it’s never quite explained why his character does this or the purpose that it has – I’m not going to spoil the movie but it’s a really interesting comment on the toll that art plays and also the way we might encourage ourselves or sabotage ourselves in equal measure
• at the end it’s left with us to really work out what we think

Conclusion

• Mike McDonough is quite a prolific and influntial playwright – Marlon James who won the book of prize a few years ago for his novel A Brief History of Seven Killings, credits him as inspiring him to this idea that violence can exist inside works of beauty – he said that a play by Martin McDonagh was the first time he’d heard gunshots in live theatre – so McDonagh has gone on to inspire another significantly great work of art
• I recommend you see The Banshees of Inisherin – it is confronting, it is funny, it is beautiful, and I hope that it’s acknowledged for the quality of film it is
• be sure to check out the rest of Martin McDonagh’s ouevre, especially his films which have all been nominated for some award, and his plays if you can access them
• contemplate the dark but funny things of life