
Alright, one category down, onto another! We'll skip to Best Picture now, starting with The Banshees of Inisherin. I've had a lot going on, so we'll see if I can actually crank these out before the Oscars. Probably not, but we'll see how far we get. But I'll definitely be posting my picks for this year. I've got to for the family competition. I'm winning this year. I kind of don't remember if I lost last year, but I'm definitely winning this year.
Anyway, The Banshees of Inisherin. Very Irish, very off-kilter, and definitely an intriguing one. Mild trigger warning for self harm, sexual assault, and police brutality.
Briefly, and Without Spoilers
The Banshees of Inisherin takes place on Inisherin, a fictional island off the coast of Ireland, sometime during the Irish Civil War (1922-1923). It follows a simple-minded Pádraic Súilleabháin (Colin Farrell) as he attempts to figure out why his best friend, Colm Doherty (Brendan Gleeson) has suddenly decided he no longer wishes to be friends. In fact, Colm adamantly insists Pádraic never speak to him again, going to great lengths to prove his earnestness in the matter. What starts as a confounding puzzle quickly devolves into a series of disturbing events with severe consequences for the former friends and the rest of the island's inhabitants.
The Banshees of Inisherin is nominated for Best Actor in a Lead Role (Colin Farrell), 2 nominations for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Brendan Gleeson, Barry Keoghan), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Kerry Condon), Best Director (Martin McDonagh), Best Film Editing, Best Original Score (Carter Burwell), Best Original Screenplay (Martin McDonagh), and Best Picture.
So yeah, it wasn't bad.
A Coming of Mid-Life Crisis (Spoilers Ahead!!)
If ever there was a coming of age story disguised as a mid-life crisis. I don't even know where to begin.
Well I do. As wonderful as the characters are, the story really carries the torch here, which I love. You know I love me a good character-based plot, but when you get a story that offers a good plot-based plot, it's something special.
I appreciate a conflict that presents itself within the first two minutes. I'm not always a fan of rising action. Like, I can find out later that two characters are brother and sister, but understanding the core conflict can be an excellent way to kick things off. It really felt like there weren't any slow spots, because just as you start to think it's going to start slipping, something happens to pick up the story again.
So let's dive into the plot a bit. One really interesting aspect of the story is that we actually get the answer to the main question pretty quickly. Colm reveals within the first act that he doesn't want to be Pádraic's friend because he feels Pádraic's simple-mindedness is holding him back. Which, ouch, but also peak mid-life crisis energy. This idea that you're suddenly at a turning point in your life, you may not have much time left, and you're starting to look back on your accomplishments or maybe lack thereof. And instead of owning the fact that you probably could have just done more with your life, or maybe refuse to acknowledge the many things you did do with your life, you blame your shortcomings on other people or things. In this case, Colm claims that Pádraic in particular is holding him back from achieving great things.
And of course, Pádraic's feelings are hurt and he feels a little singled out. I'm with Pádraic on this. There's a conversation he has with the pub owner, Jonjo Devine (Pat Shortt), where Jonjo claims that if he cut off a limb every time a dull person entered his pub, he'd only have his head left. And I think he makes an excellent point. It's an island full of like-minded people, and Pádraic probably isn't the only person who carries out simple, ineffectual small talk. It doesn't mean any of those people are less than any of the others, and Colm seems perfectly fine with spending time with other inhabitants of Inisherin. So there's something about Pádraic specifically that Colm has become so utterly exhausted with that he goes to extreme measures to prove his sincerity.
There's also a big metaphor at play (because there always is) about violent transitions. Everyone changes throughout their life. It's inevitable and it isn't necessarily a bad thing. But sometimes it isn't a pleasant thing either. Sometimes we change through necessity and it involves cutting out past versions of ourselves that we may not want to cut out. The old coming of age story.

Colm's wish to realize his full potential, while carried out in an extreme way that at times doesn't make sense, is fully believable. There's almost a survival instinct to it. He's desperate to leave his mark on the world and is worried he doesn't have much time left to do it. And frivolous distractions are no longer an inconvenience, they're destructive. I think in some ways, this isn't dissimilar to a search for the self. Sometimes, when you start thinking about who you really are or who you want to be, you realize that there are people in your life, however well-intentioned or blameless they may be, who are adding obstacles to your journey of self-discovery. Sometimes you need to distance yourself from those people and or cut them off altogether.
And then there's the change that comes through losing something you don't want to lose. Pádraic isn't going through a journey of self-discovery and largely can't understand why he can't be a part of Colm's. And so, despite the consequences, he tries and tries again to reconnect with Colm, against Colm's wishes. And it's important to acknowledge that this is fully on Pádraic. He doesn't do anything wrong until he continues to harass Colm. But Pádraic basically spends the entire movie cycling through the stages of grief because he's fully in the process of losing someone he doesn't want to lose and becomes a different person for it. In many ways, we watch Pádraic transform after a major loss.
The "WTH" Factor
But let's be real for a moment, there are a lot of coming of age stories and there are stories about pushing friends away. But the "I'm going to cut my fingers off if you don't leave me alone" is a new one for me. Firstly, he wants to be a great musician, but he's threatening to remove the appendages he needs to play his fiddle? This move is clearly more about punishing Pádraic than it is about becoming a great musician. It moves into a very weird space that is almost entirely about causing harm to an innocent party.
And to say that Padraic should have just left him alone kind of gets into a victim blaming space, especially since it becomes pretty clear that he's not particularly close with anyone else, besides his donkey, Jenny, and his sister, Siobhán Súilleabháin (Kerry Condon). And when Siobhán leaves and Jenny dies, he literally has no one. And frankly, Colm is to blame for half of that.
And all the while, the entire island seems caught up in all this. And once it's all over, there was so much of it that I liked and also this giant sense of "They're both idiots." I don't care how meta you want to get or how high-brow it's supposed to be. I don't care that one was supposed to be on a path to greatness or what their characters were supposed to represent. In the real world where this could have really taken place, this is just a couple of dudes with too much time on their hands. A.K.A. they're both idiots.
Was There a Downside?

We're not even covering the half of it. There's the whole storyline with Dominic (Barry Keoghan) and the cop (Gary Lydon), there's everything that happened with Siobhán, not to mention the parallel conflict in the Irish Civil War, visible from the island.
And of course, there was the real banshee. Loved her. Mrs. O'Riordan (Bríd Ní Neachtain) almost certainly was meant to represent a real banshee, a mythical Irish creature who signals coming death. Her few appearances were an excellent addition to the scene. But I know we all have lives to live, including me, so I won't dive in.
I've been wracking my brain for things I didn't like, and I couldn't come up with anything. It definitely may not be the kind of movie everyone likes, but when you break it down, it's an excellent story and a great film. 10/10.
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