I can't think of any movie marketed in a more deceptive manner than Martin McDonagh's The Banshees of Inishirin (2022 HBO Max). Promotional trailers for the film make the picture seem like a merry Irish romp with comic turns by Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson. In terms of "Coming Attractions", The Banshees was advertised as a sort of profane and rambunctious version of John Ford's The Quiet Man, with Farrell as Padraic playing the Maureen O'Sullivan's ingenue role to Gleeson's gruff, John Wayne. In fact, the film is a grim horror-show drenched in Celtic despair. (I suppose anyone who knows other films by McDonagh or his theatrical work would be properly forewarned.) The Banshees features spectacular and graphic self-mutilation, donkey-murder, a suicide and interfamilial pederasty -- all set against the backdrop of the Irish troubles, in this case the Civil War in 1922 in which the Free Ireland forces and the IRA took turns slaughtering one another. McDonagh has a ready wit and he writes good sardonic dialogue but the film is the opposite of the "Laff Riot" promised by its trailers. However, once the viewer grasps the gruesome nature of the picture, the movie is suspenseful, brilliantly acted, and thought-provoking -- in fact, the film follows in the traditions of Yeats and John Millicent Synge (and Sean O'Casey's Shadow of the Gunman) and explores many archetypal Irish themes, albeit in a slapstick horror vein.
The movie's premise is simple but baffling. Two men living on an isolated Irish island have been fast friends for many years, indeed, apparently almost inseparable. The older man, Colm SonnyLarry Doherty (Gleeson) is a sort of rustic philosopher -- he plays the fiddle, composes melancholy tunes that sound like folk songs, and seems to have been a seafarer, one of the Emerald Isle's "wild geese". He lives in a cottage full of weird souvenirs from his travels: a Kabuki mask, hanging effigies and fetishes, and religious Santos that have a vaguely Mexican or Filipino appearance. Colm's best friend is Padraic, a self-proclaimed "nice guy", who is pretty obviously a little bit dimwitted. The two form an odd couple but they seem to have been close for many years, reliably meeting each day at 2:00 pm for some day-drinking at JoJohn's Pub. The island is sparsely populated but it has a domineering and brutish copper, a church with spartan furnishings and no priest (a man has to be brought from the mainland to celebrate Mass); there's a grocery in a village on the opposite side of the barren island. The farmers on the island are like the pioneers in John Ford's cavalry movies (or The Searchers); they have no apparent means of eking out a living on the barren, treeless island that is rock-girt and looks like Iceland, The island, itself, has the physiognomy of ancient enmities -- the arable terrain is subdivided into tiny grassy swards that enclosed by high rock walls. An opening shot of jigsaw-fields with their innumerable stone enclosures looks like something out of a dream, or nightmare -- it could be an image from a Herzog film. (The place is off the coast of Galway and one of the Aran Islands famous from Robert Flaherty's documentary -- also the subject of one of McDonagh's plays). Periodically, the islanders hear explosions and gunfire on the mainland and are happy that they aren't entangled in the bloody internecine war between the factions that threw off British rule and are now busily murdering one another. (The movie is an obvious parable about the Troubles and the Civil War and the quarrel between Padraic and Colm mirrors the brutal and inexplicable factionalism that seems endemic to Ireland.)
One day, Colm refuses to accompany Padraic to the pub and, later, announces that he doesn't like him any more. Padraic is baffled and pleads for an explanation. Colm says that he feels his mortality and has about a dozen years left to live and, so, doesn't want to spend it" chatting" with the inane and "limited" (as he says) Padraic. Instead, Colm plans to devote himself to his art, composing music, and intends to accomplish something with what's left of his life -- this aim is inimical with his friendship with the doltish Padraic. As a token of his artistic ambitions, Colm presides over a sort of salon at the pub where he is teaching eager young Irish Nationalist musicians the art of the island's folk songs. At the same time, Colm is composing a melody that he calls "The Banshees of Inishirin". (A banshee is a legendary creature, generally appearing as a hag, who announces imminent deaths -- but, as Padraic notes, Inishirin is too nice a place to possess Banshees; at least, this is what he purports to believe.) Padraic can't accept Colm's rejection and pesters him for his friendship. This irritates Colm to the extent that he makes a horrific vow -- if Padraic keeps bothering him, he will snip off one finger on his fiddle hand and, if the former friend persists, he'll cut of all his other fingers as well. It's a bizarre promise but plausible in light of Colm's "despair", a condition that he has confessed to the rather boorish and unsympathetic priest. Like most of the other people on the island, Colm is "mental" (as Padraic's sister, Siobhan, proclaims)-- that is, afflicted by mental illness, in his case, some sort of nightmarish depression. Colm's anger at his former friend's importunate attempts to revive the friendship, and his rage at having wasted half of his life with the "limited" Padraic, has turned inward and manifests itself in gory acts of self-mutilation. First, Colm lops off one finger, much to the horror of his faithful dog. (Domestic animals play an important role in the film -- Padraic has a horse and some goats and a much beloved miniature donkey named Jenny who trots after him like a loyal Labrador retriever.) Padraic goes to the pub where Colm is holding forth, showing his students how to play fiddle tunes, but with only four fingers left on his hand. Padraic gets drunk and there's a confrontation. The encounter is complicated by the presence of the villainous cop who has been "fiddling with"-- that is, sexually abusing -- his own son, Dominick. (Dominick is reputed to be the island's idiot, but, in fact, as the movie shows us, he's more witty and well-spoken that Padraic; his so-called idiocy--he's an "ee-jit" as the other characters proclaim -- is really just an aspect of his unfiltered and naive way of speaking: he says outright what he feels and speaks aloud what others would conceal.) The cop, Peadar, has beaten up his son for stealing his poteen (some kind of booze), smashing the poor boy across the face with a tea kettle -- "I didn't mind the kettle," Dominick says, "except for the spout." Padraic insults the cop, who later beats him up, and, then, demands that Colm acknowledge his friendship. Colm goes home in a rage but has said something to the effect that he likes Padraic better when he's not so "nice" and when he behaves aggressively. When Padraic hears this, he goes to Colm's cottage, barges into the place, and again denounces Colm for his betrayal. Colm, true to his vow, cuts off his other four fingers and goes to Padraic's farmhouse to throw the amputated digits at the building. Somehow, Colm interferes with Padraic's miniature donkey, Jenny, and accidentally kills the little creature. Padraic mourns the loss of the animal, buries her in his meadow with a cross over the grave, and, then, sets out to revenge himself on his former friend. This sets up the climax of the movie. Siobhan, who is the most intelligent of the characters in the film, has received an offer to teach on the mainland. It seems that the war there is winding down. She sees that there is no future and no hope on the impoverished island and, when Dominick makes a romantic overture to her (with predictably horrible consequences), she decides to escape from this stony prison in the sea and emigrates to the mainland. An old woman all in black is stalking about the island (when people see her coming they hide behind the ubiquitous stone walls) and forecasting that soon people in the area will die. (She's the banshee in the title and we see her, from time to time, portentously gesturing atop cliffs or in the barren fields.) Colm has completed his melody, although he can't play it because he has maimed himself. If there is a glimmer of hope in the awful circumstances, I suppose, that it lies in Colm's persistence in his art and Siobhan's escape from the desolate island.
McDonagh's direction is impeccable and the island locations are spectacular. Of course, McDonagh writes brilliant and penetrating and very funny (on occasion) dialogue. The film's central argument, that Colm is willing to amputate his own fingers to deter Padraic's well-meant, if simple-minded overtures, requires some considerable suspension of disbelief -- and, finally, can only be accepted as evidence that the seemingly rational Colm is, in fact, completely insane. (The dialogue with the priest about despair tries to naturalize Colm's bloodymindedness, but it's pretty obvious that among all the bitter, moronic, or half-crazed characters in the film, the fiddler is by far the most disturbed and least sane.) McDonagh makes Colm's bizarre vow to lop off his own fingers plausible within the terms of the picture, but, in fact, on cool reflection (let's say the morning after watching this movie) this plot point is pretty dubious and hard to accept. Evidently, McDonagh wants to propose a dialectic contrasting the avuncular Irishman with his beautiful brogue and taste for the "craythur" (booze) with the obsessive and savage aspects of the national character -- those parts of the Irish soul that fueled the horrific bloodletting during the Civil War (and that fueled the "Troubles" in Belfast, a topic on which McDonagh has previously written). The contrast is between the gentle, kindly, and sexually perverse Leopold Bloom and the monomaniacal, monkish Stephen Dedalus in Joyce's Ulysses. The characteristic Irish reverence for the arts, particularly music, animates the clash between Padraic and Colm; Colm poses an either/or dichotomy -- either Mozart or niceness and pub-chatter. (This reverence for art throbs in Joyce and is obvious in Van Morrison, for instance, as well as popular songs like "Raglan Road".) A weakness in McDonagh's scenario is the overly symbolic and aggressively insistent subplot involving old Mrs. McCormack, the banshee whose presence is clearly premonitory, foreshadowing the calamities at the film's climax. This character is so completely allegorical that her presence is a bit distracting. But, it must be said, that the duality between the ancient crone, Mrs. McCormack and the young, vibrant and intelligent Siobhan reflects a central component of Irish mythology. In Portrait of the Artist, Joyce says "Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow", a sentiment echoed by Siobhan when she considers with dismay the bloodshed on the mainland. Yeats imagined Ireland as a crone, impoverished and embittered in his play Cathleen ni Houlihan performed in 1902 at the Abbey Theater and written with Lady Gregory. But Kathleen ni Houlihan is also imagined to be a beautiful young woman capable of urging men to murder one another. McDonagh exploits these aspects of legend in The Banshees and, although his presentation of these issues is overly explicit, I can't argue that it isn't effective. The film is exceptionally good in all respects and, of course, I recommend it highly.
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