The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
Directed by Martin McDonagh
No other connection healed the hurt of that first abandonment, that first banishment from love’s paradise.
As a straight cis male, I’ve always valued films that emphasized and specifically focused on platonic masculine friendships. I’ve long cited Robert Altman’s California Split as one of my favorite films, a powerful movie about two men consumed by a mutual vice, the camaraderie and communion of their passions, and their subsequent fallout. I think about that film often. The irony is that I have very few (male) friends. Maybe I think of California Split and now The Banshees of Inisherin as a kind of model of what happens between depressed men.
The silence promotes denial.
The logline says it all: Everything was fine yesterday. Set in Inisherin, a fictitious Irish isle, Pádraic (Colin Farrell) goes to see Colm (Brendan Gleeson) for their ritual of drinking Guinness on the island’s only bar. But today is different and Colm remains hermetic, stuck at home with his fiddle and dog. Unperturbed, Pádraic heads for the pub, where everyone he encounters asks if he and Colm are having a row. Drunken nights have clouded his memory enough to cause doubt, so Pádraic figures something must be awry. Initially believing the silent treatment was a result of an April Fool’s prank, Pádraic confronts Colm only to discover the truth: Colm finds Pádraic dull, and now in his 60s, feels no obligation to spend his remaining time chatting mindlessly with his former best friend. The news is bruising and matter-of-fact, delivered by Gleeson with such cutting indifference that you can pinpoint the moment Pádraic’s heart shatters in two.
Shutting down emotionally is the best defense when the longing for connection must be denied.
I’m no stranger to the silent treatment. It started in childhood. My parents left me home alone with my younger brother, a two-year old in a crib. Which means I had to be seven. They had left for some party, promising to come home by 7pm. Seemed reasonable, I thought. I went about watching cartoons and busied myself like a professional seven-year-old would. But 7pm turned to 8pm turned to 9pm and no word. It was sometime in mid December, the cold night sky seemed more vivid and dangerous back then. I panicked and called 911. Officers arrived and implored me to pack a bag. I listened. But then my parents returned. Problem solved, I thought. Thanks for the help officers, capital work. Of course it was a little more complicated than that and I had to plead with the cops, as a seven-year-old, to just leave us be. The officers relented, warning my parents not to “spank” me and left. I recall tidying up before bed, my heart racing, my parents seated in the dining room in silence, and having my mother yank on my ear until I collapsed to the ground. She barely spoke a word to me for a year. Not until I was an adult in my 30s did I accept that I was not at fault for any of it.
Anger is the agony of believing that you are not capable of being understood, and that you are not worthy of being understood.
Siobhan (Kerry Condon), Pádraic’s live-in sister, confronts Colm about the situation. She’s at odds about it all, and implores Pádraic to give up on the relationship. While Pádraic finds some solace in his friendship with the isle’s dimwitted resident, Dominic (Barry Keoghan), it doesn’t fill the Colm-shaped hole in his heart. It’s that feeling of disposability, that sense that one moment you can be best friends with someone, and the next you’re left for dead is what feels so palabale and leaves Pádraic aimless and lost. As he continuously confronts Colm, trying to understand why, Colm threatens Pádraic; if Pádraic continues bothering him, Colm will cut off a finger for every interaction. He lives up to that threat.
Patriarchy demands of men that they become and remain emotional cripples.
Pádraic’s journey is a tumultuous one. No one likes to feel rejected and it’s coping with the confusion of that rejection that causes him to spiral. He’s commonly referred to as a simple man, where his kindness is recognized as a weakness. On a drunken night, he confronts Colm. For Colm, his interactions with Pádraic stunt his perceived greatness; he wants to be remembered like people remember Mozart. In short, Colm has outgrown Pádraic. But to Pádraic, life is not about being remembered but to make the best use of our time in the present; about the small gestures of kindness that can be expressed in making living on this planet more agreeable. It’s a passionate defense, one that Colm recognizes as the most interesting thing Pádraic has said. But it doesn’t change anything and eventually we see Pádraic embrace a more jaded, bitter temperament. And he begins to lose everything.
Speaking from experience, that sense of loss is vividly felt. I’ve lived it. I continue to live it. Over the past two years, I’ve seen people leave my life in droves as if abandoning a sinking ship. Whether it’s a former lover in Ravenswood that no longer speaks to me. A friend in Rogers Park that feels slighted. An ex in Humboldt Park that refers to me as Lord Voldemort. Enemies in Logan Square that wish me nothing but ill-will. Or friends that have left for the West Coast. Even my therapist, a woman that gave me the strength to overcome some of life’s greatest obstacles, left for Europe this year. It’s been a time of painful loss. And there are days where I’m filled with skull-clutching despondency and anger, where I feel like life has been set ablaze and the flames come close to singeing every particle of my body. But all that hate? It’s not keeping anyone warm. It’s just burning you up. If I was Colm at one point in my life, an embittered man prone to rejecting the world for its failure to serve me, then I’m just now looking for the comfort of peace and companionship and goodwill. I’ve experienced a lifetime of loss and the strain of that weighs too heavily. It’s a shame that it took losing everything to realize what makes life worth living. In that great silence comes gratitude for the world that remains.