Where Was Martin McDonagh’s ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’ Filmed?
The Banshees of Inisherin is one of the most anticipated movies of the season. Judging from the early reviews, the film represents a return to form for its writer and director, Martin McDonagh. His previous movie, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, was initially lauded and received several Oscar nominations, but now has a pretty tepid reputation among those who have seen it.
The movie reunited him with the actors who starred in his finest work, and the production took place in parts of Ireland that he and his family are very familiar with.
‘The Banshees of Inisherin’ is a darkly absurd movie about a friendship on the brink
McDonagh is a noted playwright, and The Banshees of Inisherin was originally conceived as a play that would complete a trilogy of plays set on the Aran Islands after The Cripple of Inishmaan and The Lieutenant of Inishmore.
Inisherin takes place on a fictional island off the coast of West Ireland and is set during the Irish Civil War in 1923. The story centers on the relationship between Colm Doherty (Brendan Gleeson) and his best friend Pádraic Súilleabháin (Colin Farrell). Well, former best friend. The two have a daily routine of meeting at the local pub to chat, but one day, Colm doesn’t show up.
He feels that their time together has run its course. Colm is a folk musician, and as he enters a new stage in his life, he thinks it’s best to spend more time on his art than wasting time with his nice but boring friend. So Colm dumps him and even goes as far as to tell Pádraic that if he continues to reach out to him, he will start cutting off his own fingers.
From that point on, Inisherin becomes a character study exploring male relationships and what it means to live a good life. Speaking to Deadline, McDonagh explained that based their separation on a traditional break-up. “I just wanted to tell a very simple break-up story,” he said.
“And to see how far a simple comedic and dark plot could go. Bringing back Colin and Brendan after 14 years was of the utmost importance in my mind—they were always going to be those two friends falling out. That was the original germ of the idea.”
The filming locations were aligned with the movie’s themes
Inisherin was shot during the summer of 2021 on Inishmore and Achill, two islands off Ireland’s west coast. McDonagh knows this terrain well despite growing up in south London. His parents are both Irish, frequently lived in Irish communities, and spend time with his grandparents over the holidays.
During the filming, the director would stay at his parent’s place in Galway, which is also along the Irish coast. “Though I didn’t tell my parents what I’d been up to,” McDonagh said in an interview with The Guardian. “I’ve learned not to, because it usually ends up in some gross beheading or something.”
Many of the filming locations and sets for Inisherin were very close to the edge of the island. During an interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert alongside Gleeson, Farrell explained that he viewed the nearby ocean as a metaphor for the movie’s themes about repressed emotions.
“It was like the waves and ocean were representative of the inner turmoil that the people of the community felt,” he said. “A lot of this film is about suppression, it’s about the stuff that’s kept down and not spoken about.”
McDonagh has prior experience with most of the cast
The earliest selling point for Inisherin is that the movie is the first time McDonagh, Gleeson, and Farrell have worked together since 2008 cult favorite In Bruges, the writer-director’s first full-length film. But the two main actors aren’t the only ones McDonagh has a history with.
Pádraic’s sister Siobhan is played by Kerry Condon. The Irish actor previously acted in two of McDonagh’s plays, The Lieutenant of Inishmore and The Cripple of Inishmaan, winning awards for the latter performance.
Pat Shortt, who plays Jonjo Devine, twice worked with McDonagh’s brother John Michael on two movies, The Guard and Calvary, both of which also starred Gleeson.
