\u201cMaybe he just doesn\u2019t like ya anymore,\u201d she says, in jest. By the end of The Banshees of Inisherin<\/em>, no one is laughing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The latest from writer\/director Martin McDonagh, five years after the Oscar-winning triumph of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri<\/em>, feels like a conscious effort to go back to this origins \u2013 not only to his home country of Ireland (Ebbing<\/em> and its predecessor, Seven Psychopaths, <\/em>were both set in America), but to his feature directorial debut, In Bruges<\/em>, which also starred Farrell and Gleeson. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In that film, they were a pair of contract killers whose loathing of each other grew into something resembling affection, or at least tolerance, over the course of a work trip in the titular tourist destination. Banshees<\/em> cleverly inverts that formula; its protagonists have, by all accounts, been best friends and constant companions for as long as anyone can remember, including themselves. But Colm doesn\u2019t want that anymore, and it\u2019s as simple as that. P\u00e1draic didn\u2019t say or do anything, Colm assures him: \u201cI just don\u2019t like ya no more.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat is he, 12?\u201d is such a sensible question that even Dominic (Barry Keoghan), the town dim bulb, asks it. \u201cWhy does he not wanna be friends with ya no more?\u201d But the genius of McDonagh\u2019s razor-sharp screenplay is how it plays with our perceptions and assumptions; we meet P\u00e1draic first, and see Colm only through his eyes, which allows the former to be our object of sympathy and the latter to seem enigmatic and impenetrable. But the more Colm is pressed, and the more he explains his thinking, the more sense he makes; he just wants \u201ca bit of peace. In me heart, like.\u201d And who doesn\u2019t want that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n These conflicts never run in a straight line, either; Colm may be done with P\u00e1draic, but when the poor sap is beaten senseless by the town policeman (and, almost needless to say, town bully), Colm reaches out with a moving gesture of pity and kindness. And when P\u00e1draic gets liquored up and lets Colm have a piece of his mind, Colm chuckles, \u201cThat was the most interesting he\u2019s ever been. I think I like him again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But he doesn\u2019t \u2013 in fact, he grows so frustrated with his former friend\u2019s inability to leave him be that he threatens to start cutting off his own fingers if P\u00e1draic speaks to him. (\u201cNow he\u2019d rather maim himself than talk to ya!\u201d Dominic notes.) It takes a certain kind of wit to spin this slight into a subject, and McDonagh leaves no stone unturned; he explores all the nooks and crannies of this conflict, no matter how ridiculous (there is, for example, the question of finger disposal: \u201cI\u2019m not throwin\u2019 the finger out<\/em>, I\u2019ll get dirt on it\u201d). And, in doing so, McDonagh keep raising the stakes, little by little, until we\u2019re at a point where neither of them even know what they\u2019re mad about anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Farrell earns every ounce of praise he\u2019s getting for this, which may be his most fully realized screen work to date; he takes all the character\u2019s turns with grace and sympathy, and pulls of the neat trick of playing a dumb guy without playing dumb, which isn\u2019t as easy as it sounds. Gleeson\u2019s arc may be even tougher to convey, since we so frequently only see him through P\u00e1draic\u2019s eyes, but he finds and plays the poignancy in every well-placed pause and withering stare. Keoghan, whom we mostly know from convincingly playing creeps (including, most memorably, alongside Farrell in The Killing of a Sacred Deer<\/em>) proves to have real comic chops, and Condon, as one of the few women in this orbit, plays the exasperation therein with real verve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n McDonagh\u2019s vernacular, more than ever, is a perfect mix of lyricism and vulgarity (there are a lot<\/em> of \u201cfeckin\u201ds), and the rhythms of the conversations are tight as a drum; the P\u00e1draic\/Colm scenes, in particular, amount to a series of perfect little duets. But he\u2019s never just leaning on his gift for dialogue. He sprinkles sharp little character moments throughout the script, so generously that even the smaller roles get them. And his regular thematic concerns \u2013 a stew of Catholic guilt, fear, responsibility, and forgiveness \u2013 are present and accounted for, particularly in the increasingly downbeat (and more than a little allegorical, as he certainly didn\u2019t set it during the waning days of the Irish Civil War at random) third act. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s also McDonagh\u2019s most aesthetically pleasing film yet; the landscapes are gorgeous, rolling hills and cobblestone paths and welcoming pubs, which he seems well aware can only serve to undermine the bleakness and grudges and loneliness within them. Grim and uproarious, quirky and chilling, The Banshees of Inisherin <\/em>doesn\u2019t quite reach the heights of In Bruges<\/em> (hell, few things do). But it\u2019s yet another winner from one of our most complex and compelling filmmakers.\u00a0![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/banshees2-1024x509.jpg\")
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