Do not ask for whom the banshees of Inisherin wail

They wail for Martin McDonagh

(This piece originally appeared on my Substack, Artless. Subscribe to that here.)

Critics and sophisticated audiences love to hate allegories which they rifle through artworks to find. The first time I watched a production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? an acquaintance reviewing it for the papers wouldn’t let us talk about much else than how George was the U.S. and Martha was the U.S.S.R. and the moment where he shoots a gun that fires only a cocktail umbrella (or was it Martha lighting Nick’s cigar? I forget) symbolised — you guessed it — the Cuban missile crisis.

Now it might seem with The Banshees of Inisherin writer/director Martin McDonagh is very much trying to say something about the Irish Civil War. The war is the backdrop of the story’s conflict, one that’s simultaneously more personal and more abstract. While just over the sea the guns rat-a-tat, on the isle of Inisherin Colm (Brendan Gleeson) is threatening to cut off his own fingers if Pádraic (Colin Farrell), his sometime friend, continues to talk to him and so fill their years with idle chat when he could be writing music. The film ends with the men looking out to sea, at the start of what looks like will be a very long war of their own.