Here’s How a Real-Life Breakup Transformed ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’ After 1 Star Said It Was ‘The Worst Thing He’s Ever Read’
Look at any list of 2022’s best movies and you’ll see The Banshees of Inisherin near the top. Martin McDonagh’s latest film uses the fallout between the best friends Pádraic (Colin Farrell) and Colm (Brendan Gleeson) to examine masculinity, the cost of ambition, and the best way to live a life. The film’s deftness with these topics (and its ability to do so in a way that is often funny) and the environment that surrounds these characters are excellent, but McDonagh’s writing was not always so clear. At a recent awards show, he recalled one of Inisherin’s stars giving him a less-than-stellar review of the original script.
‘The Banshees of Inisherin’ is a dark comedy about life’s biggest questions
The titular Irish isle that serves as the setting for The Banshees of Inisherin is a mundane small town like any other. Its residents are mostly just trying to get by while staying clear of the Irish Civil War taking place just across the water. To rise above the tedium, Colm and Pádraic keep up a daily routine where they meet up to chat over a pint at a local pub.
Everything seems fine until Colm suddenly stops showing up. When Padraic confronts him about this development, Colm offers a simple, but brutal truth: he doesn’t want to be friends with him anymore. He thinks the relationship has run its course and would prefer to focus on his folk music instead of, in his view, wasting time with his nice, but boring friend who spends most of his days with a donkey named Jenny.
Pádraic’s attempts to change his mind only anger Colm to the point that he sets an ultimatum that if Padraic doesn’t leave him alone, he will start cutting off his own fingers. It’s an absurd, unrealistic situation, but it allows The Banshees of Inisherin to house big philosophical debates inside of grounded conversations between characters. The tension between Colm and Pádraic’s worldviews is the narrative center of the movie, but the perspectives of Siobhan (Kerry Condon) and Dominic (Barry Keoghan) also provide important details that make Inisherin an entertaining film to watch in the moment and think about afterward.
Gleeson had a withering assessment of McDonagh’s first draft
A movie about companions breaking their bonds with one another also represents a reunion for its main stars. McDonagh, Farrell, and Gleeson previously worked together on the movie In Bruges and have been close friends ever since. (Condon also acted in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and two of McDonagh’s plays.)
The trio mean a lot to each other, but their camaraderie doesn’t get in the way of healthy criticism. McDonagh presented Farrell and Gleeson with the Cinema Vanguard Award at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. In his introductory speech, the filmmaker told the story of when he presented the first draft of The Banshees of Inisherin to the actors. The response was mixed.
“Colin loved it. Brendan thought it was one of the worst things he’d ever read,” McDonagh revealed to a laughing audience. “Surprisingly, Brendan was right, so I threw that script away and went off to make Three Billboards instead.”
He returned to the script three years ago and found that his writing to still be, in McDonagh’s own words, “sh*t”. But a sudden change in his personal life gave him the inspiration to improve to make the right revisions.
“Just after that, somebody broke up with me and I was really sad and like any good writer, I thought “Hang on a second, there could be money in this,” Mcdonagh said. “So I quickly rewrote it and sent it to the boys and here we are today in Santa Barbara.”
The movie is a regular at all notable awards shows
The Banshees of Inisherin is garnering a ton of attention throughout awards season.
The movie’s eight Golden Globes nominations were the most any film had received since Cold Mountain in 2004, and the production went home with three: Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, Best Actor – Musical or Comedy (Farrell), and Best Screenplay. Inisherin earned another four BAFTA Awards from ten nominations for Outstanding British Film, Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Keoghan), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Condon), and Best Original Screenplay and tied another record for the most nominations at the Screen Actors Guild Awards.
The movie didn’t win anything at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, but the cast will be hoping for better luck at the Oscars, where The Banshees of Inisherin is in the running for nine categories: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor (Gleeson and Keoghan), Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing (Mikkel E.G. Nielsen), and Best Original Score (Carter Burwell).
