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The Banshees of Inisherin


I should have known better. When Rotten Tomatoes shows high critic ratings (97 percent in this case) but much lower audience ratings (76 percent), that’s a red flag for me. I almost always agree with the audience.

Why would a filmmaker waste a superb cast and beautiful settings on a meaningless and depressing story that is not worth telling? I’ll answer my own question: It’s because critics are bored. They fall for well-made films with nihilistic themes that can cut through their jaded hides. Critics are rarely in it for the story. They’re in it for the filmmaking.

As long as made-for-critics films like this scoop up the awards, filmmakers will keep making them. What a waste.

9 Comments

  1. Chenda wrote:

    I saw the trailer for this and it didn’t appeal. I saw a good film called Lion a few weeks ago, a true story about an Australian who was adopted as a homeless child from India. He tries to find his birth family using Google Earth and childhood memories of the railway station where he got lost.

    Sunday, December 18, 2022 at 1:53 pm | Permalink
  2. daltoni wrote:

    Thanks, Chenda!

    Sunday, December 18, 2022 at 2:08 pm | Permalink
  3. Karren wrote:

    Agreed! I gave up about 1/2 hour into it. What a waste of time! The scenery was pretty though.

    Tuesday, December 20, 2022 at 9:54 am | Permalink
  4. daltoni wrote:

    Hi Karren: That’s part of the waste, isn’t it? It’s nice to know that parts of Ireland still look like that. And a pub with a single outside table overlooking the sea? If that exists somewhere, I’m on my way! 🙂

    Tuesday, December 20, 2022 at 10:03 am | Permalink
  5. Henry Sandigo wrote:

    Bummer, and I thought it would be fun to watch – the actors are excellent in other stories I’ve seen

    Tuesday, December 20, 2022 at 3:35 pm | Permalink
  6. Malinda wrote:

    I agree about the nihilism, it’s too big of an ask with such a cast and a setting so beautiful it hurts your eyes. And Jenny, who steals the show . . . !

    Did you like the film ‘Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri’? I did, and apparently this is the same writer/director, Martin McDonagh.

    My one takeaway on ‘Banshees’ was that I didn’t like Colm or his tactics, (though I much respect Brendan Gleeson’s acting!), but I can sorely identify with that horrid feeling and predicament when some people you’re kind of trapped intimately with in a communal daily routine (and whether you consent or not, or like it or not) are ever so keen to just push themselves onto you day after day and conscript you into absorbing all your time for themselves, and waste it frivolously and excessively. After years and years this can go on if you let it, and don’t have the heart to stop it; before you know it, at some point you find yourself almost in some sort of ‘villain’ role because you have to communicate somehow to this person (gently if you can or by avoidance) that they are flippantly and selfishly wasting your life by degrees, bending your ear with trivialities that only they care about and coincidentally *never* return the favor to listen to anything you have to say (that’s key). At this revelation, they’ll take an extremely high offense to you suddenly making their own carelessness with time apparent when you simply want to safe-guard your own. Quickly now your subtle move for self-preservation and outlook on life in general is a personal insult they take internally, and a grudge that can turn venomous (and is unfortunate but partly a relief too). (Though strangely here it’s Colm, the safe-guarding one, that turns venomous and manipulative in this case.)

    Anyway, I also found this online . . . I thought it was an interesting elaboration on the metaphorical extremes from the man supposedly behind the madness. What do you think?

    ‘ In an interview with Indiewire, writer/director Martin McDonagh said he simply found the idea “interesting.” He said, “I thought it was interesting that an artist would threaten the thing that allows him to make art. Does that thing make him the artist?”

    In a separate interview for Deadline, Gleeson remembered what McDonagh told him was the reasoning behind his character’s unusual penchant for self-mutilation: “He said it’s quite common for writers to wake up in a nightmare where they feel that their hand is no longer capable of writing. That we fear the loss of the thing that allows us to express ourselves, whatever it may be. Your voice if you’re a singer, or your memory if you’re an actor; we worry we’ll forget our lines. If that thing is threatened, it becomes about everything. So, I think my rationale was that Colm had made a commitment to risk everything in order to facilitate this space that he felt he needed to create properly.” ‘

    Last little side note: the above kind of reminds me of Christopher Hitchens writing his last book ‘Mortality’ on his deathbed having totally lost his voice (and most cherished instrument) to esophageal cancer (and how he was dealing or not dealing with that worst case scenario). But then, Hitch didn’t chop out his own vocal cords, either. Maybe the director leaves us feeling emotionally manipulated rather than sympathetic.

    Friday, December 23, 2022 at 5:55 pm | Permalink
  7. daltoni wrote:

    Hi Malinda: Yes, Jennie stole the show. A very good discussion could be had about when, in a story, it is befitting to kill off a much-loved character. Without getting into all that, this script shredded any artful understanding of such a device. I find McDonagh’s comment about it being “interesting” that an artist would threaten the thing, etc., etc., completely silly, something that he ought to be slapped around for rather than given a bunch of awards. This is what happens when filmmakers are very good at filmmaking but don’t know diddly-squat about the art of story.

    Saturday, December 24, 2022 at 4:49 am | Permalink
  8. Henry Sandigo wrote:

    Well, I watched the movie anyway. And must say you were right. My wife and I went away – WTF!

    However, my brother died because he couldn’t move on from his addiction, make a better life like he had prior to the addiction. The folks on that island can’t all be bored or lonely, and maybe because they know so little about the outside world – why bother to think about anything else? I was asked why even have the brute copper in the movie – just filler I guess. The boy who killed himself out of despair or the bit of intellect he had – he made the right choice. Small village knows everything about everyone. Siobhan made the right decision – GTHO!

    Wednesday, March 15, 2023 at 6:44 pm | Permalink
  9. daltoni wrote:

    Hi Henry… So sorry you had to go through that! Last year was just not a good year for movies, at least according to my taste…

    Wednesday, March 15, 2023 at 7:02 pm | Permalink

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