The Banshees Of Inisherin (2023) dir. Martin McDonagh – Reviewed by Mason Horsley
“Even the worm will turn”
– John Heywood
It’s a great expression, and one I repeat in my mind regularly. Even the wotOut of fear and out of sick desire. I’m both afraid and eager for the day I eventually turn. I both hope it never comes, but feel some people won’t respect me until I do. Disregarding that therapy session, I also believe it’s the best quote to attribute to ‘The Banshees Of Inisherin’, Martin McDonagh’s 2022 drama about two men at the end of a beautiful friendship. None of us realise what we’re capable of until we’re pushed to the edge, in danger of falling, what moral values we’re ready to cast aside when we’re treated so unfairly by people we know, love and trust.
‘Banshees’ really connected with me when I first saw it at the cinema. I walked out, reflecting that it’d be an amazing film to watch with a friend of mine, however, we never did. Even now it connects with me, because it feels as if that friendship is on its last legs. Thankfully, that end will never be as hurtful as that of Padraic and Colm’s. Thankfully, neither of us will go down the same road, punishing the other for an easily ignorable sin. Even the nicest, albeit, possibly dullest man in Inisherin can turn like a worm.
Padraic Suilleabhain goes to the pub one afternoon to discover his best friend Colm Doherty wants nothing to do with him and shrugs him off like an ugly scarf. Padraic tries desperately to get to the bottom of the issue and revive their now dead bond, but as Colm’s patience wears thin, he threatens Padraic. One finger for each day Padraic bothers him, Colm will cut off. Not only will Colm be disabled but he will be unfairly presenting Padraic as the reason for his failure as a fiddle player. While the idea turns Padraic as desperate as ever to help him, when put into practice, Colm’s fingers take away Padraic’s prized possession. And even the worm will turn.
Colin Farrell plays Padraic sweetly and innocently. From his very first appearance you’re on his side and feel like you understand him. You understand he’s a simple man who likes a drink and a chat with his mates, doesn’t want to cause any ruckus and sees no distinction between friends and family. Colin’s mastery of this only elevates the hurt and pain both he and the audience feel as he decides to confront Colm.
“You know what you used to be? Nice! You used to be nice! Didn’t he not? And now, you know what you are? Not nice.”
Brendan Gleeson plays Colm with a quiet annoyance that doesn’t force you to completely light your torches and wield your pitchforks. You can understand his viewpoint but you’ll still arrive at the same point: You can’t just stop being friends with someone. Not with Colm’s reason, anyway. Gleeson accomplishes a subtle transition into a villain, allowing Padraic a way out but placing him in a position to become the antagonist. It’s manipulative, even considering the idea that an artist needs to suffer for his masterpiece.
“Tomorrow I’ll write the second part, the day after I’ll write the third part of it, and by Wednesday there’ll be a new tune in the world which wouldn’t have been there if I’d spent the week listening to your bollocks!”
Barry Keoghan plays Dominic, the socially awkward young man who is regularly beaten by his police officer father and has a crush on Padraic’s sister. Keoghan is hilarious and easily steals the film with almost minimal screentime. His lack of volume or subtlety mixed with innocence and desire for genuine connection makes for a loveable character.
“Jesus Christ, Dominic! Would you ever stop creeping up on people?…Between you and that ghoul, Jesus!” “I always call her a ghoul too, because she is a ghoul. Jeez, we have a lot in common, don’t we? Me and you. Calling old people ghouls and that.”
Colm is interesting as an everyday antagonist. Colm abandons his bond with Padraic because he believes Padraic holds him back from greatness with his poor conversational skills. ”The other night, two hours you spent talking to me about the things you found in your little donkey’s shite that day”. Yet, the only time he brings up annoyance is today, when he cuts off almost all interaction with Padraic with no warning. When Padraic tries to reconnect, put their issues to bed, Colm threatens him with self-mutilation, placing his own musical skill at risk for his alienation. “Well, that won’t help your fecking music.” “Aye, we’re getting somewhere.” I theorise this method is because of the glamorisation of the tortured artist. During Padraic’s confrontation, Colm expresses his admiration for Mozart, and while Mozart wasn’t a tortured artist, Beethoven (who is mentioned drunkenly by Padraic as “Borvoven”), from the same period was famously beaten as a child to advance his skill. For self-mutilation, the obvious example is Vincent Van Gogh, who cut off his ear after a dispute with a fellow artist. We look back on these artists with praise that they were able to create such masterpieces after coming from traumatic and distressing environments.
But Colm refuses the context of those artists. Beethoven was beaten by his father to become a musician because of Mozart’s success at a young age, and Gogh was tormented and ridiculed by an entire town. In Inisherin, everyone treats Colm with sweetness and respect, the pub bartender even mentions that Colm and Padraic seemed an odd sort since Colm was the thinker of the pair. Colm’s toxic mean to an end leads me to believe that he’s in denial, refusing to see that he’s held himself back by choosing to drink with friends and instead blames Padraic to lessen the pain.
The story is just as upsetting when you consider the background of the leads. Colin Farrell had fallen into drug addiction and alcoholism in his teenage years, in 2005, he had checked himself into rehab and began his still-continuing sobriety a year later. Farrell was staying at the Chelsea Hotel a year or two later when he first met Brendan Gleeson, who he would co-star with in McDonagh’s directorial debut ‘In Bruges’. Gleeson knew about Farrell’s troublesome relationship with the bottle and met him in his hotel room, presenting a bag of still and sparkling water, planting the seed for what would become an admirable bond on and off-screen.
‘Banshees’ feels like a fictional epilogue to that real friendship. Adding context, it’s heartbreaking to see Farrell, even in as a fictional character, drinking stout after stout as he looks on to a friend who has turned his back on him, shunned him. A friend who picked you up through good times and bad, deserting you because you seem dull. Who could blame the worm for turning?
“Friends come and go”. We hear that all the time from sympathetic family and friends, but it never gets any easier. It can be so hard finding someone who accepts you for everything you are, someone you could never get bored with, someone who you can jump into the deep end with. When you find that person, you feel a rush. I’m secretly a lonely person (I’m working on it) and one of the things that keeps me going is seeing my mates, being able to talk to them about anything. I can’t imagine what I’d do or feel if one of them suddenly turned their back on me, saying I was dull and not worth their time. I really hope I don’t go the way of Padraic. I really hope I never turn.
Mason’s Top 3 Reasons to Watch ‘Banshees Of Inisherin’
- The perfect Irish comedy trio: Colin Farrell, Brendon Gleeson and Martin McDonagh
- A few of the best monologues and duologues ever written (which I can’t help but recite randomly)
- A story which everyone can relate to, cry to and laugh to.
The Shawshank Redemption (1994) dir. Frank Darabont – Reviewed by Daniel Fagan
“Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”
It’s impossible to say what the single greatest friendship on film is for certain, just as it is impossible to say for certain there is a single greatest film of all time, in any objective sense anyway. Great friendships in film and especially great friendships in great films are, of course, everywhere. Ferris, Cameron and Sloane in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off; Michael, Nick and the whole group of working class buddies in The Deer Hunter; Sheriff Bart and Jim ‘The Waco Kid’ in Blazing Saddles; Luke and Dragline, Shaun and Ed, Murtaugh and Riggs, Han and Chewie. Friendships allow characters to be vulnerable and lay bare to the audience the most fully realised version of these fictional people.
Watching a great friendship play out on film is one of the best feelings the medium can offer, throwing audiences through endless possible waves of emotion. Kirk’s eulogy for Spock digs into my soul, Bill and Ted’s affable, happy-go-lucky nature always makes me smile and Sam’s dedication to Frodo is endlessly inspiring. And I’d love to talk about each and every one of these friendships and how they shape the film and inform the relationship between audience and movie. But I can’t. I have to pick one, and the friendship which struck my fancy when time came to choose was the pure and unyielding friendship of Andy Dufresne and Ellis Boyd ‘Red’ Redding in The Shawshank Redemption.
Frank Darabont’s greatest work needs little introduction. It’s one of the most popular movies of the last thirty years, and for good reason, it is effortlessly crowd-pleasing, life-affirming and simply excellent. Adapted from the Stephen King short story turned novella, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, Darabont’s film does what most of the great King adaptations do, streamline the more convoluted elements, tighten up the characters and elevate the emotional beats. That isn’t to say the novella isn’t a great little read – it is – but the story of Shawshank lends itself far more to cinema than to the page.
Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) is an innocent man, but so are all the guys in Shawshank State Prison if you ask them. Accused of murdering his wife and her lover, the mild-mannered banker Dufresne is sentenced to two consecutive life sentences in Shawshank. Andy’s time in prison is narrated to us by another lifer, Red (Morgan Freeman), whose confident and perfect delivery steers the movie effortlessly through the thirty years the story stretches. On the qualities of his voice acting alone, this is one of Freeman’s best performances in his storied career. Watching the friendship of these two develop and grow over their thirty years together in Shawshank is one of the many great pleasures of watching this movie. Red’s shell, hardened by his decade in prison before Andy arrived, gradually cracks and the desperate man, terrified of his own institutionalisation is revealed. But Andy changes very little, he remains distant and unknowable man, and he never loses hope that he will one day be free of the walls of Shawshank.
Rounding out the primary characters is Warden Norton (Bob Gunton) who is an absolute irredeemable evil presence hanging over the prisoners, only rivalled by the head guard Captain Hadley (Clancy Brown). Every member of the cast and crew behind the camera and during post-production are doing amazing work. The supporting members of the cast are just as integral to the effectiveness of the story as the main trio. The standout is James Whitmore as Brooks – an obvious declaration for anyone who has seen the movie. Brooks is the heart of the first half of the movie and it is his story which leaves the greatest impact on subsequent watches.
With legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins (Blade Runner 2049, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, No Country for Old Men) helming the photography, this movie could never be anything but absolutely stunning. Every frame is a painting and so alive and evocative. Deakins’ style fits the film perfectly. The yard is overwhelmingly bright, and the cells dark, lightning cuts through and parts rain, characters sit in moonlit cells alone with their thoughts. Deakins is a storyteller with the images alone. Mute the movie and almost every character’s motivation and intention is told through the camera.
I would be remiss to not mention Thomas Newman’s score. With subtle piano and sweeping strings that soar over the prison yard. Sombre when it’s required but hopeful and joyous by the end, this is a true work of art that glues everything together. Image, dialogue, movement are all enhanced by the score. It’s never distracting and when it trails off as the film fades to black the audience can’t help but smile.
In the most iconic exchange of the movie, Andy remarks:
“I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living, or get busy dying.”
It’s a phrase that has transcended the movie itself, and rightly so. There are few lines of dialogue that can distil a story to its core and even fewer that can take on a life of their own beyond the context of the movie. Andy is a beacon of hope, irradiating everyone who comes to know him, including the audience. Like Luke in Cool Hand Luke and Henry Brubaker in Brubaker, Andy provides a redemption in his presence and his actions. That is to say, The ‘Shawshank’ redemption is not that of Andy Dufresne – he hardly needs it – but of the other inmates of Shawshank. Red, Heywood, Jigger, Floyd, Ernie, Skeet and all future inmates needed the salvation hope provided. The simple act of drinking a beer on a hot day, listening to music ‘about something so beautiful, it can’t be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it.’, or hanging a poster of Rita Hayworth upon the drab cell wall reminds the hopeless what it is to live, and live well.
The final twenty minutes is where the magic happens. The two hours of building pressure explode in a perfect display of pacing, performance and score. The pages of dialogue are gripping, and Red’s final monologue (taken verbatim from the novella, great work Stephen) makes for some of the most gorgeous closing lines of any film, leaving your heart soaring away with the camera. And just before the fade to black, over the spectacular blue pacific, five words appear: In Memory of Allen Greene. A dedication to Darabont’s agent and good friend who passed away during filming.
Jay and Silent Bob Reboot (2019) dir. Kevin Smith – Reviewed by Emma Cranby
In most of Kevin Smith’s films, the dynamic between iconic stoners Jay and Silent Bob can be fairly characterised as antagonistic at best. At worst, it seems hostile, and one is inclined to question why, if they dislike each other so much, Jay And Silent Bob spend so much time in each other’s presence (indeed, I don’t believe I can think of a single film in the entire View Askew film series where either Jay or Silent Bob appears on their own). But if you can, I encourage you to try not to question it, because this dynamic is the key to why Jay and Silent Bob work so well together. There’s no pretence, no disingenuousness in their relationship; Jay and Silent Bob are utterly themselves – even when this is, respectively, a vulgar, aggressive loudmouth with an overactive libido, and a reticent, perceptive pothead with a knack for mechanics.
It’s in the absurd harmony of this odd-couple relationship that the magic of Jay And Silent Bob Reboot lies. While their dynamic is just as entertaining and compelling in Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back, and even a film like Clerks, where they aren’t the main characters, it shines most of all in the Jay And Silent Bob Reboot because this is, fundamentally, a film about friendship. And, despite their incessant arguing – or at least, Jay’s incessant criticism of Silent Bob – the connection between Jay and Silent Bob is as real and sure a friendship as any other I’ve seen on screen.
When the film opens, Jay and Silent Bob are in their 40s. Having been friends – or, as Jay puts it, hetero life-mates – for over 30 years, the pair of unemployed slackers nonetheless continue to spend their time loitering outside the Quick Stop Convenience Store, selling marijuana and harassing customers. That is, until they become embroiled in a court case that results in them losing their rights to the names Jay And Silent Bob. They learn that a film is being made of their comic-book alter-egos, Bluntman and Chronic, and, naturally, travel to Hollywood to try and stop this film being made. On the way, no-longer-Jay-and-Silent-Bob encounter Jay’s old girlfriend Justice. They discover that Jay is the father of Justice’s daughter Milly, who forces Jay and Silent Bob to take her and a group of her friends to the Bluntman and Chronic fan convention ‘Chronic-Con’ so they can be in the new film (the same film which, ironically, Jay And Silent Bob are trying to stop from being made).
A significant part of the film’s emotional weight is derived from this examination of the bonds of family. Although Milly doesn’t realise Jay is her father until very late in the film, her character is defined from the start by her desire for a father, and his absence in her life. Jay is forced to consider what it would be like to be a father, and as he bonds with Milly he realises that he wants, dearly, to be part of her life. When Jay tells Milly that he is her father, he accepts a level of responsibility that he’s been avoiding his whole life, and may be said for the first time in all his film appearances to work at growing up.
Of course, this isn’t easy for him. In the final scene before the credits roll, Jay tells Milly he’s unsure if he’s ready to be someone’s dad. But, he continues, he wants to try – and this, to my mind, is the moment at which the ‘reboot’ part of the title really becomes apparent. No longer is this still the Jay and Silent Bob who became international terrorists and released hundreds of zoo animals in a diamond robbery, or who destroyed a game-show stage and wreaked total havoc at a shopping mall just because they needed something to do one day. Or, it is, but this ‘rebooted’ Jay and Silent Bob are so much more than they were. They’re caring, thoughtful, and at least somewhat mature, and overall undeniably different characters from those who first shoplifted, rapped and danced their way into viewers’ hearts over 30 years ago in Clerks.
As well as allowing Jay to be a father to Milly, his growth also results in a shift in his relationship with Silent Bob. In a moment that few Levin Smith fans will be able to resist smiling at, some of the last lines of the film are Jay telling Milly that the best advice he can give her is this:
“Find a best friend you can have a whole lot of adventures with. Pick a good listener. Someone who always has your back even if he’s standing right next to you.”
The scene is deeply touching, and Silent Bob – who is, of course, standing right next to Jay and Milly – conveys as much, smiling tearfully and pressing a hand to his heart in a profound and truly moving piece of cinema.
Being emotional in this way, to an extent that not all of Smith’s films are, Jay And Silent Bob Reboot acts as a celebration not just of friendship, but also of the past; as well as a farewell to this. The film embraces the future without demanding anything of it, and with energetic but heartfelt performances from Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith as Jay and Silent Bob respectively, Jay And Silent Bob Reboot offers viewers a hilarious and enthralling addition to an always entertaining series.
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