Struggling for Meaning on an Irish Islet
In all things one does, there is an unspoken question of purpose – does my work mean something? Are these relationships going to last? Is this true love? It is, generally, through these questions of worth and weight that we determine who we consider ourselves to be. But, if one is not careful, this ever-present why can quickly consume all else and become, itself, the seeming reason to Be.
The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) is a movie about the weight of this why, and the damage done when it overtakes what we are. Set on the fictional village island of Inisherin, Banshees follows Pádraic Súilleabháin (Colin Farrell) and Colm Doherty (Brendan Gleeson), two long-time friends whose friendship abruptly ends when Colm decides that he “just doesn’t like [Pádraic] anymore.” Pádraic spends the rest of the film attempting to win back Colm’s affection, butting up against his sister Siobhan (Kerry Condon), the village dunce Dominic (Barry Keoghan), and others on the island for whom this unexpected split becomes a topic of much village intrigue. Following a series of failed attempts to reconcile with Colm, Pádraic ends his efforts by burning down Colm’s house in retaliation for Colm accidentally killing Pádraic’s pet donkey. The film ends with the two firmly disconnected, but with a clear understanding of the new position they both inhabit, and the need to build something (literally, in Colm’s case) anew.
The stated reason for Colm’s severing of the relationship is, as was mentioned above, a sudden realization that he does not like (and may not have ever really liked) Pádraic. The two may have spent almost every day together, drinking and laughing and being seen not as Pádraic and Colm but Pádraic-and-Colm, but apparently Colm might not have ever actually enjoyed this. Pádraic insists that Colm must simply be depressed to have such a sudden swing in personality, but what lies underneath the extreme reordering of Colm’s priorities is in fact something much more dangerous.
Colm is obsessed with Being in the most superficial sense. He speaks constantly of the real as something intentional, which one must strive toward, but ultimately which is reified only in the recognition of future beings. Mozart was a man who Was, a man who achieved true Being, because he did something that shaped the world. Not because of how he was, but because of what what the world knows he did. This is in direct opposition to the tact Pádraic takes, relying on the centrality of niceness to define his sense of self. He is a fundamentally nice guy – we hear him (and countless others) express as much repeatedly throughout the course of the film. He takes care of his family, he is affable, and he tries his hardest to make his friends happy. He acts gently and in ways others expect him to, which is undeniably nice. But, as Colm notes, people don’t remember Mozart for being nice – they remember him for his art.
Colm’s attempts to Be unfold quite dramatically throughout the film. He begins by severing his closest relationship to pursue more intellectual (or, in his mind, honest) pursuits, attempting to compose his own masterpiece on the fiddle. Then, when Pádraic refuses to accept to his desire for separation, Colm begins to cut off his own fingers (and throw them at Pádraic’s house) as a way to prove his seriousness and implicate Pádraic’s in the destruction of the still-unwritten masterpiece. He has students from the mainland come to visit him during the composition, seemingly attempting to force a legacy onto the music world of mainland Ireland. In all he does, he is pushing toward his Real, striving to Be in the same way Mozart was. In his mind, Dasein is firmly within grasp if he can just will it. To Be is to be remembered as a man for the world. It is to answer that interminable “why?”
Pádraic has a similarly single-minded understanding of what it means to Be, but with entirely different conclusions. For him, legacy is still critical, but it is a relational legacy – how one is known to be to their sister, and their friends, and their donkey. Inching closer to an actually Hideggerian understanding of Being, Pádraic believes that his status is affirmed only by the way he is in relation to that which surrounds him, distinct from any external factors outside of his control. He is from Inisherin, so he is a nice man of Inisherin. He is not part of the Irish Civil War, so while he doesn’t like the killing, he does not meaningfully engage. He is a brother, and as such, he defends his sister. It is only through the detonation of one of his most central relational identities – that of Friend – that Pádraic is forced to grapple with the reality that simply being nice does not, in fact, confer upon him any special status. In fact, neither does being a brother or a friend. And, as Dominic points out upon learning that Pádraic had schemed to get one of the fiddle students to leave Colm’s tutelage, even his standing as nice is not irrevocable. He is nice (or, as others put it, dull) because of the things he does (and does not) do, not because of what he Is.
It is these realizations – that Being comes not from simply existing, nor from your relation to other things, but from the fact of acting unprompted in relation to others, and that your position in Being can change at a moment’s notice – that hit Pádraic at the end of the film, and which he internalizes on the path to become more of a man in the world.
After Colm finishes his ritual of cutting off and throwing his fingers at Pádraic’s house, Pádraic’s prized donkey, Jenny, chokes on one and dies. This happens almost immediately after Siobhan has left the island to accept a job as a librarian on the mainland in an attempt to escape a village of dull men doing boring things trying to convince themselves they are actually, somehow, interesting. Following this, Pádraic calmly informs Colm that he plans to burn his house down on Sunday after Mass, and that he will do so whether or not Colm is inside (but that he asks Colm to please let the dog out beforehand). He keeps this promise, and it is only after the house has stopped burning that Pádraic returns to find Colm alive, on the beach, where they share a telling exchange:
COLM:: “I haven’t heard any rifle-fire from the mainland in a day or two. I think they’re coming to the end of it.”
PÁDRAIC: “Ah, I’m sure they’ll be starting it up again soon enough, aren’t you? Some things, there’s no moving on from… And I think that’s a good thing.”
. . .
PÁDRAIC: “Anyways…”
COLM: “Pádraic… Thanks for looking after me dog for me, anyway.”
PÁDRAIC: “Any time.”
Pádraic is no longer nice in any meaningful sense of the word, and he has given up on earning Colm’s forgiveness. But he is now acting as himself. He denies Siobhan’s request to join her on the mainland – he is a man of Inisherin, and he will stay, despite others’ protestations. He hates Colm for taking the life of his donkey, so he took action to take something in return. He is dull, but he is acting. And unlike Colm, he is not acting for an Other. He acts because he wants to, and his actions are clearly understood as of, for, and alongside all those things which make up his world. And worst of all, he finally understands the weight of this.
In a sense, Pádraic has become like Dominic – the dense son of a child-molesting, abusive police officer on the island, whose sole seeming prerogative is to try to woo Siobhan. Shortly before his corpse washes up on shore, Dominic drops his village idiot persona to engage with Siobhan in the most gutting exchange of the film:
DOMINIC: “What I was… don’t skip ahead… What I was wanting to ask you was… Jeez it’s cold, isn’t it . . . should’ve planned this, but what I was wanting to ask you was… You probably wouldn’t ever want to… I don’t know… to fall in love with a boy like me, would ya?
SIOBHAN: “Oh, Dominic. I don’t think so, love.”
DOMINIC: “No, yeah, no. I was thinking. No. Not even in the future, like? Like, when I’m your age?”
SIOBHAN: *Shakes her head, gently*
DOMINIC: “Yeah, no, I didn’t think so, but I just thought I’d ask on the off-chance, like, y’know? Feint heart and all that.”
Dominic, for all his shortcomings, cannot be accused of failing to Be on Inisherin. However, for Dominic, it is not a conscious effort. He does not strive to Be, but by virtue of living truly in the world and in his relationships, he Is. Perhaps, with his new forced independence and with Dominic and Siohban to learn from, Pádraic can begin to Be as well.
Jitter 