Thoughts on The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)

Is it such a sin to be dull?

Is it such a sin to want more from life?

Passivity vs. Ambition taken to an extreme, set on a small Irish island all while the very real terrors of the Protestant and Catholic civil war in Belfast underscore the events that take place in the film.

These are two men who have lived together in a glass bottle their whole lives, looking out at the vast world that they know little about while acting like they do, powerless over any of the goings-on that occur outside of their bubble.

One man is content with never challenging this reality, while the other can't accept it at all, and in an almost folklorish, cartoonish way destroys himself and his relationship with the other man.

At the height of this civil war of ideologies, their approaches twist into something else, each influenced by the other, resulting in aggressive passivity and self-mutilation. By the end of it, both have lost all that was comfortable to them in the beginning, and have adopted the other's viewpoint; Colm that has nothing left, stripped of his worldly possessions and what little ability he had at playing the fiddle, now has accepted stasis, and Padraic that was so comfortable in his mundanity now has been forced to action, his kindly manner that defined him now poisoned and sullied.

Originally posted on Letterboxd on 29th January, 2023