The Banshees Of Inisherin

StupidLikeAFox

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120077071#Comment_120077071

Any themes were very obvious athere was no subtletly at all - take keoghans character for example, the acting wasn't great at all, he put on a silly drawn out accent and this was supposed to represent some sort of special needs/autistic person. Then he was a gobshite until he wasn't a gobshite. He was treated like a gobshite because we were told he was, he played a fool until (go tobann!) there was was moment of tenderness- we knew there was a moment of tenderness because he stopped being a fool for a few seconds and had a wistful look on his face. Completely obvious, there were no shades of grey to his character at all.

It just felt like they came up with a wacky storyline ("My only passion is the fiddle but I'm fed up with you so if you don't leave me alone to play the fiddle I'll cut off my fingers so I can't play the fiddle") where they tried to crowbar in some poor humour ("feck this, feck that, me donkey is in the kitchen") and then added some lovely scenery and a bit of fairly obvious symbolism (civil war in the background etc)

I wouldn't say it's formulaic but they definitely picked a few ingredients for a film, threw them all in a pot, and they didn't really gel well for me

AyeGer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120077178#Comment_120077178

You seem to be getting a little defensive about this film. Were you or someone you know involved in it?

Its a film that has divided opinion and got people talking about it anyway that’s for sure.

Lil Fred

This was a steaming pile of dung. Awful stuff

Man Vs ManUre

Was that Guinness they were drinking from the bottles?? Would it have been good back then??

saabsaab

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120077018#Comment_120077018

Yea. The two of them ended up in the Guinness tent in Galway a few times I'm told.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120076991#Comment_120076991

The reason people who don't like this movie have such vitriol against it is because of absolute up your own whole comments like this.

I watched it with no phone or any other crap and I was also somehow "intelligent enough" to like many other McDonagh movies but this just wasn't a very good one.

I concentrated, I got the plot and the character studies but outside of Condon it just wasn't very good.

johnny_ultimate

Mod note: Keep it civil please folks. Some people like the film, some don’t. Everyone is entitled to express their views without being insulted.

StupidLikeAFox

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120077706#Comment_120077706

Not to go off topic but this is how stout was generally served back in the day and how it looks (and still looks) out of a bottle. At one point pubs would buy the guinness in barrels and each pub would bottle their own, each pub would have their own labels with their name printed on it. The black pint with a creamy head is a relatively new invention - possibly from the 60s I think - and is down to the draught pints (or the cans with the widgets) using nitrogen instead of co2 like most beers.

So the film is historically accurate on that front.

Count Dracula

Very overrated and frankly did not really enjoy it. Well shot and the scenery was beautiful and very oirish, but crap enough and I could not recommend.

Hidden metaphors my eye, or lack of digits, or far away gunfire, naahhh.

Seneca the Stoic

So anyone who didn’t like it wasn’t paying attention and just doesn’t ‘get it’. Got it.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120078109#Comment_120078109

We weren't as smart and refined as the people who liked it

AyeGer

I’ve heard a few explanations now for the fingers being cut off, but it’s still ridiculous.

Yakov P. Golyadkin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120078563#Comment_120078563

Throw a few out there, I'd be interested to hear them.

saabsaab

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120078148#Comment_120078148

I suppose so?

daheff

I thought it was a very US focused attempt at twee ye olde Ireland and how life allegedly was. Aimed squarely at the US audience's imagined version of how they wanted life to have been in Ireland in the early 1920s.

Tried way too hard. Very unrealistic....like who cuts off their own fingers?

Total misery fest. Nothing comedic (black or otherwise) about it.

Not a patch on In Bruges (as it is regularly compared to).

AyeGer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120078601#Comment_120078601

I googled it.

Yakov P. Golyadkin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120078827#Comment_120078827

Useful advice on a discussion board, cheers.

Man Vs ManUre

From Mcdonagh’s 4 films I’d rate them best to least (1) In Bruges, (2) 3 Billboards, (3) Banshees (4) haven’t seen it so 7 psychopaths.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120079124#Comment_120079124

What about the Guard or Calvary which I think are easily the best two.

Edit:Sorry read that wrong and thought it was McDonaghs plural.

Man Vs ManUre

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120079207#Comment_120079207

I didn’t like Calvary at all, it just seemed to be a bunch of weird characters being over the top, I’d have it last. I’d put The Guard in at (4) after Banshees.

Count Dracula

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120078563#Comment_120078563

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120078601#Comment_120078601

I would give my left twinkie to find out myself. Very unsettling and not funny, black or otherwise.

Count Dracula

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120079124#Comment_120079124

7 psychopaths is very funny, much better than this one, different league imo.

pixelburp

I think the fingers thing was part of Colm's overall malaise over his artistic merit - or lack thereof. He was a middling musician who suddenly lamented the fact he had nothing to show for it as he hit old age. A smattering of friends and zero legacy. No one would remember him once he passed. So I saw the mutilation as a convenience to never play again; while also forcing him to write this apparent opus that'd seal this legacy he sought by way of the music students - lopping his fingers off afterwards to settle the matter either way.

Honestly, the guy was beyond depressed - the "despair" spoken of with the priest - and was clear he needed help and intervention. The tragedy being that Padraic, the self confessed "nice guy" and only comrade, couldn't spot that his best friend was spiralling, and his sister deeply lonely. He got caught up in the slight against him, rather than the deeper meaning behind it.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120079306#Comment_120079306

I thought Calvary had some great satire of Irish society and an actual humour to the black the way Banshee's only thanks it has.

CalamariFritti

I don't know. I get it that it gets the 'local bonus' especially considering it's a production of international level and it's sporting many of the Irish greats. And yes acting was very good.

And while there may have been metaphors parallels allusions and whatyouknows that I wouldn't grasp tbh I found it pretty sh1te. The story itself taken at face value is pretty unlikely to say the least. And not very interesting either. I didn't know what the movie was trying to tell me, what the message was.

So what remained was a look into bleak and boring island life and pretty landscapes and the unmistakable message that this is supposed to be a serious film and it better be taken seriously. (with the serious bit being that it was seriously aimed at critics and oscars but not much more)

In the age of sh1te films it was something different but that alone doesn't make it a good movie IMO. I certainly wouldn't recommend it to anyone or watch it again ever.

AyeGer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120079317#Comment_120079317

Why did Colm cut off his fingers in The Banshees of Inisherin?

That really is the question, isn’t it? It doesn’t make sense! Why would he purposefully mutilate his hands if the reason he broke up with his BFF is to focus on being a great musician? The movie never explains it, but one theory is that Colm—who speaks to the priest about his “despair,” a coded word for depression—feels this pressure to be a “great” musician. He is obsessed with leaving behind a legacy, as he tells Pádraic in the pub. By cutting off his own fingers and claiming that Pádraic “made” him do it, he has found a way to take the pressure off himself to be a great musician.

It’s just a theory! 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.”

Hey, if I lived on a tiny Irish Ireland in 1923 with no internet, I might start cutting my fingers off, too.

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120077940#Comment_120077940

Whatever. It's a movie. No need to get upset

1

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120077940#Comment_120077940

You're completely entitled to not like the film

I'm completely entitled to ask if you watched it properly (i mean without spending half your time on your phone)

You're completely entitled to respond or not respond to my question

nowhere is anyone shutting anyone down

squidgainz

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120080443#Comment_120080443

I don't really think you should be asking someone if they watched a film "properly", I think someone saying they watched it is enough to be honest. Just an odd question to ask everyone who didn't like it.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120080443#Comment_120080443

Where did I say you are shutting anyone down.

I just said you were a snob.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120080427#Comment_120080427

You much be on a wind up here. You are the one can't take an ounce of criticism of this movie.