I was totally fired up for Banshees of Inisherin since I really liked In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths as well as McDonagh's Pillowman. I also loved Farrell and Gleeson's chemistry in the first one.
Ultimately, I didn't like the movie. Basically, I was very disappointed :( I'll try to list some of the reasons. I'll avoid spoilers
• I start with the easy one. I heard from some that it had a nice picture. But any professional cinematography team can extract a nice and mysterious atmosphere from a sparsely populated Irish island. So that's not saying much in itself.
• I felt like the movie doesn't know what it wants to say or how to say it. In the Guardian's review it was likened to Beckett's work, except that in Beckett's work - according to himself - abstraction and condensation prevail. Instead, here we had a little bit of everything: a little bit of realism, a little bit of fairy tale, a little bit of comedy, a little bit of social ramifications, a little bit of civil war, a little bit of misery porn, a little bit of God's mayhem, a little bit of women's liberation, a little bit of the disenchantment of the world, a little bit of sadness or depression. Of course, none of these elements are problematic in themselves. In fact, everything could possibly be combined successfully and, frankly, I tried to get into the film and see it all as its own, strange ontology. Unfortunately this did not happen.
• I have the impression that the shocking, violent and completely insane event of the film was the main factor that, for me, it ultimately did not work at all. Everything that happened on the screen impinged on this event logically, factually, aesthetically, and fictionally. Neither was the film able to fit it into its context in a smooth way, nor was this event able to express anything about the world of the film.
• It is typical of the film's confusion that, in the end, the prophecy given towards the end comes true not for one of the two central characters but for another, minor one. This wouldn't necessarily be a problem, but: a) It happens without any pre-economy and b) in a way that sweeps under the rug the plot problem that arises at that point.
• Another example of the awkwardness is that while towards the end we have an emotional (and aesthetic) climax with the letter to Siban, in the end we end up with the two characters again as if almost nothing has happened. This scene is topped off with the – sorry – vine philosophy that "some things don't change and it's better that they don't," which has nothing to do with the fact that the movie itself is premised in the first place on some things changing rapidly and even from one moment to another.
• I also find any reading that has to do with the civil war funny. What etc what? The fratricidal conflict of the Free State of Ireland and the IRA?
• I feel that the concept and atmosphere of the film, as well as the complexity that the creator seems to have gone for, would have been better served if the extreme, crazy event of the film (1) was completely absent and there was a more subdued, less cheesy treatment of the same exactly matters.
• However, the characters individually each have their own interest and sometimes set up a nice, immersive world, but the loss of orientation and balance of the whole unfortunately does not let them breathe. Shame about the nice performances too.
https://amp.theguardian.com/film/2022/sep/05/the-banshees-of-inisherin-review-martin-mcdonagh
PS: The best part of the movie is definitely the donkey Jenny
