Team Experience is pairing up to debate the merits of each of the big awards season movies this year. Here’s Abe Friedtanzer & Eric Blume on one of the Oscar frontrunners...
ERIC: Abe, here we are again with another split decision. But unlike our discussion about The Whale, which you loved and I definitely didn't, we're swapping sides for The Banshees of Inisherin. I absolutely loved this film. I'd go as far as to say it's close to a masterpiece. It's a piercing and painful meditation on loneliness, a heartbreaking and lyrical stare in the face at death. Martin McDonagh is tackling The Big Themes with ferocity and honesty, and I was deeply moved. But let's start with why you didn't care for the film...
ABE: Hello Eric! I was going to start out by saying that I don't loathe this film or any like that, I just find it to be vastly overrated and can't understand why everyone loves it so much. I definitely disagree that it's a masterpiece, but I'm very aware that most of the people sitting around me at the crowded theater in Toronto were howling with laughter. I was not. It was my fifth movie of the day, which I don't see as a detractor since I enjoy the film festival experience and seeing too much doesn't influence my enjoyment of the later films in the slate. But I also think I was set up for moderate disappointment since I had many of the same issues as I did with McDonagh's previous films, Three Billboards. I liked In Bruges considerably more, which was the last time that McDonagh, Colin Farrell, and Brendan Gleeson all worked together. I found this new collaboration to be aimless and not really about anything. I was waiting for it to get there, and instead it just got (predictably) dark. What hook did I miss that everyone else seems to have found?
ERIC: Not really about anything? Abe! It's about all of the biggest stuff! Going back to the most basic philosophical questions: Why are we here? Why do we exist? McDonagh has created this world where our four main characters are approaching the end of the road (death), trying to find meaning. Colm (Brendan Gleeson) feels death the closest, and he feels the only way he might be able to find meaning is to release himself from the everyday world around him and search in music and poetry for transcendence. Dominic (Barry Keoghan) has only one hope: Siobhan (Kerry Condon), who herself is searching for more than what their tiny village can grant her. Padraic (Colin Ferrell) has a speech midway through the movie, questioning why goodness, and living a decent life, and treating other people well isn't "enough" to define a man? Why do we place more value on music and poetry and "legacy" than how we live our lives and treat others?
McDonagh even has the balls to have the old woman character play Death itself...she's always right around the corner when you least expect her. There's no hiding. McDonagh even goes so far as to dress her like Charon, black and skeletal. She literally beckons for Dominick to 'cross the river" to her before his suicide.
The loneliness of these four central characters was shattering to me. Padraic welcomes the farm animals into the house to simply be one fraction less alone. Siobhan realizes when she leaves that she's sentencing Padraic to himself. Dominic loses his one dream. Colm cuts off his nose to spite his face. These trajectories and endings have echoes of classical drama, and McDonagh's writing evokes the great Irish playwright John Millington Synge, where small-village Ireland takes on a larger symbolic role of purgatory, where characters trap themselves in limbo, forced to make tragic choices.
It's also the definition of a tragicomedy, a very high artform that's extraordinarily difficult to pull off, so very few people even attempt it. Not only is McDonagh's language beautiful on the ear, it's funny, too. He knows how to string sentences together that have comic rhythms and intricate meter, and these actors know how to knock them out of the park. He laces these sad, tragic characters with elevated language that gives them snap and verve, and most importantly wit, a prized Irish quality that's woven into the fabric of the culture (Kenneth Branagh found this same quality in last year's Belfast).
I think McDonagh has the highest aims possible in mind as an artist on this picture. Obviously, they didn't resonate with you. How did you feel about McDonagh's direction?
ABE: I did love Belfast, but didn't find that quality here. I can see what you're saying but none of these characters were vibrant or accessible enough for me to feel any of these things. One thing I kept thinking back to regarding McDonagh's direction (and writing) is that I have appreciated his work before, as I mentioned, with In Bruges. The tone there worked. I actually cite a film by a different McDonagh, Martin's brother John Michael, as my favorite of the bunch: The Guard. Now that's a Brendan Gleeson performance I would fully endorse, doing excellent comedic work opposite Don Cheadle. But John Michael's latest film, The Forgiven, starring Ralph Fiennes and Jessica Chastain, hit me the wrong way -- too unpleasant and off-putting to truly enjoy. I think what these admittedly brilliant and creative brothers are doing is challenging and delicate, and only sometimes does the end result really hit the mark.
I think expectations of a director like either of the McDonaghs, who do very similar work to each other, plays into my expectations of the film. The same goes for someone like Ruben Östlund. I wasn't enamored with either Force Majeure or The Square, and Triangle of Sadness hit me exactly as I expected it to. I laughed a few times, cringed more than that, and ultimately came out of it with decidedly mixed feelings. I understand that's part of what McDonagh (Martin) is going for here, but there was never that moment that cracked it open. Therefore I felt unengaged, watching these people's misery from a distance without the benefit of being in on the joke, if you will. McDonagh knows and understands his characters, but I couldn't connect with them, so his familiarity didn't translate to this audience member.
ERIC: That's a shame. I think Banshees shows a huge growth for McDonagh as a director. He's always had a stunning way with actors, and always keys his films in just the right place tonally, but this was the first film of his where he really focused on his framing for storytelling, and it pays off in spades. Throughout the film, McDonagh frames Farrell and Gleeson together in a variety of ways that expresses where they are emotionally at all times. Sometimes they're shot through panes of glass, sometimes separated on inside/outside of the pub, etc. And that final shot of them together on either side of the frame, "Death" right in between them? High holy hell, what a terrific composition and way to end a film! He uses this gorgeous green and yellow color palette throughout that evokes melancholia and ache to great effect. I felt he really evolved as an artist with this picture.
ABE: I will say that watching Farrell and Gleeson at the Golden Globes made me okay with the idea of Farrell getting recognition for this role (though as you know I'm team Brendan Fraser), and I do want to start by singling out the performance that got me through this film: Kerry Condon. I first saw her in a movie called Don Hemingway opposite Jude Law and have been a big fan of hers since then, including her recent TV work on Ray Donovan and Better Call Saul. I can take or leave any of the other performers - Condon is the MVP for me. Do you agree?
ERIC: I think Condon is smashingly good in this film, and she's my pick far and away for Best Supporting Actress this year (these awards for Angela Bassett are incredibly silly). But as great as Condon is, I still don't think she's the acting MVP. To me, that's Colin Farrell. As you know, I'm not much of a fan of Fraser's work, and I find Farrell's performance here even more deeply felt, and much more of a high-wire act. (Granted, Farrell has the benefit of a much better script.)
Farrell knows how to get every ounce of zest out of McDonagh's language, and he's sublimely comic throughout while still feeling through Padraic's aching sadness. He plays each moment with fierce directness, while giving it just a *smidge* of a heightened nature given the poetry of the language. He's exactly 1% "actorly" in a way that's perfect for the material, while 100% being fully committed to the character's pain. Farrell's Padraic is a fully-fleshed out and original creation: a man who, due to the purity of his simplicity, is beautifully complex.
Do you have any other thoughts on the cinematography or production design or score or other elements of the film?
ABE: I wish these characters spoke to me more and that I had grasped the same meaning from all those moments and shots. I do think that the production values are good, but nothing compared to some of the other films I've seen this year. The score is pensive, haunting, and deliberate. I'm a huge Carter Burwell fan, even though I don't think this is quite his best work (see: A Serious Man). There's a simplicity to this entire film that I think makes it easy to watch in some ways but also difficult to connect to. I can't say that I hated anything about it but the enthusiasm from others both at my screening and ever scine has often had me rolling my eyes.
This film has taken a similar awards trajectory to Three Billboards in that it had a great night at the Golden Globes but then lost both the Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay prizes at the Critics Choice Awards. Farrell might still be good for a win but I'm not betting on that or anything else. Not that a film's Oscar wins cement its legacy at all, but do you think this film will end up going home empty-handed on Oscar night?
ERIC: Abe, I enjoy you. First of all, I will NOT see A Serious Man, as I loathe that film -- my least favorite Coen Brothers movie! And you're probably eyerolling your way through this whole discourse, because I am beyond enthusiastic about The Banshees of Inisherin. I do concede that McDonagh is a certain flavor, and his humor is a very, very specific bullseye. I feel sad you didn't connect with it, but I hope I've adequately shared specific reasons for my great passion for this beautiful movie. It's one of the few films in the history of the medium I think can truly earn the word elegiac.
The Critics Choice Awards are a bit of an industry joke, and the voting pool is completely separate from the Oscar voting pool, so it's a pretty grain-of-salt situation there. I think the way Film Twitter reacts to all the precursors is pretty comical, quite frankly. I'm only going on my pool of actors/writers/directors within the business, almost all of whom loved this film. Beyond that, they revere McDonagh, who is seen as a brilliant writer still working outside the mainstream while working within its which is something a lot of people want to do. The writers want to write like him, and they get that he has a skill with language they don't have. Actors in particular love this film. It's the movie this year they all most wish they could have been in, which goes really far with the acting branch. That's why I am bullish on Farrell even despite my bias for him personally. I also think Condon stands an excellent chance of winning, as does McDonagh for screenplay and Burwell for the score. I think Best Picture is also a strong possibility. So I see as many as five and as few as two (Farrell and McDonagh). I'm just glad this film exists.
ABE: All I’ll add is that McDonagh got snubbed for directing Three Billboards. This isn't a sign that Oscar voters don’t like him but I do believe it is something that could happen again this year since he’ll still be up for writing and that could be enough. But that’s another conversation.
Our debate may now be over but I was still tortured driving home from picking up dinner tonight as the large billboard just a few blocks from my house reminded me of this film’s existence. I’ll eagerly await its replacement.
other "split decisions"
- All Quiet on the Western Front - poetic or vacuous?
- Avatar the Way of Water - extraordinary or recycled?
- Babylon - thrilling or interminable?
- Everything Everywhere All At Once - essential or exhausting?
- The Fabelmans - joyous or phony?
- TÁR - engrossing or underwhelming?
- Triangle of Sadness - facile or multi-faceted?
- The Whale - moving or just plain bad?