THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN Review

A return to form. McDonagh, at his best the Coen's UK cousin. At his worst? Too didactic, breaking the line from violence to his black humor payoffs. He excels with a certain containment, and maybe even a personal, non-subtextual distance from the subject matter. When he stays small and stays near home, he mines diamonds.

Unsure if that leads to better characterization or just better acting, as both are back again with flowers. Farrell, long an unsung hero on screen, is great. Selling quiet despair, dullard confusion, innocent excitement, and violent meltdown. All in less than two hours. All with honesty and empathy. Gleeson has certainly done cloaked violence before, but here there is something more. A maturity to it. A veneer of melancholy. Or maybe a mask removed to reveal it. It's subtle, and it's evident how much he's burying behind the eyes that is never revealed. Condon is a quiet star, as well. Portraying the analog to Gleeson's desire for more. But, even without the grandiose displays of said yearning, a fiercer depiction. They understand one another, but where Gleeson is playing it like a rocking chair, Condon comes in like the last car on a rollercoaster. And the great Keoghan. Who writes a complete character arc in the scene by the lake.

All for not without McDonagh's return to form on the page. The setting, pacing, and such tonal excellence. Shifting from the marrow-deep pain in Farrell watching Gleeson meet with a stranger of a fiddler, straight into the utter hilarity of Farrell then picking up the fiddler and lying to him, right back into the pain of Condon arguing with Lydon, and whipping finally to the genuine comedy of Farrell hiding from Flitton behind a wall. Hitting all of those marks, that constant tonal juggle with each actually being felt, is rare. It takes a master. And I'm so, so glad McDonagh is back.

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The above was taken from my Letterboxd review.