The Banshees of Inisherin - Moronic
Thoughts On: The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
A simple man's life spirals when his friend decides he doesn't like him anymore.
The epitome of the moronic, The Banshees of Inisherin is a brilliant piece of cinema. It is a film that poignantly expresses the plight of the simplest forms of humanity - the desire for friendship and recognition - against doom, finding humour in dark absurdity. Quite a while ago, I delved into the films of the Coen bros. From the Coen bros, you can learn of a very interesting form of cinema and drama based on the moronic. Take examples from The Big Lebowski, Fargo and No Country For Old Men; each hold characters that are fundamentally stupid in a way - with such being their charm - that make fatally stupid decisions. What is so brilliant about the Coen brothers is their ability to use stupidity to bring us to the edge of humanity; the limitations of ones intelligence, the edge of their being where the story of their life is found. No Country For Old Men is a great example; a stupid decision to take some money leads to the chase of a man's lifetime. In this chase is doom, is a dark destiny decided by the totality of who our main character is. One will find a similar projection of gumption in all Coen bros movies. Its primary result, in my view, is the alignment of stupidity with destiny; their narratives are all about our limitations defining our fate. And such is a humorous illumination of the otherwise common notion of fate that is far more concerned with stars, redemption, growth and success. We all believe our destiny is above and beyond us, but all too often destiny is that which creeps up from behind to knock you stupid, or--perhaps it is your last unlucky day--dead.
It is far more likely that our destiny will be the product of the limitations of our being that we press against in every existential moment; to have ones life force closed in upon rather than saved by mystic ascension. Such is a primary sensation of being; the dream we live constantly being crushed while we try to build it. The Coen brothers, much like McDonagh, utilise a dramatic mode echoing just this; I call it morodrama. With The Banshees of Inisherin, McDonagh exemplifies the fragility of a meaningless life, allowing destiny to manifest through moronic self-destruction. This destiny resides in the limitations of our characters' being; in their failures and hamartia. We see in all plainness loneliness and stature tip the scales of otherwise meaningful (enough) lives when two friends lose their grip on their bond. Without this bond, their lives become meaningless, a shadowy destiny allowed to manifest through their stupidity, In this, we discovery an automatism - a random triggering of violence and self-abuse. Such is fate itself; something insane, beyond decision-making and consciousness - symbolically cutting ones fingers off being a great example of this madness. So as arbitrary as the stupidity of this narrative appears, all lunacy is rationalizable as an expression of each characters' personal failures. The two friends, for example, face their destiny after neglecting their self-constructed te or dreams, dreams of music and simple, good living. Keoghan's village fool also faces his fates having lost his dream of love. He, notably, does not survive his interface with destiny.
What the morodrama of The Banshees of Inisherin teaches us is that the cultivation of our doom and the coercion of dark destiny emerges from the abandonment of our stupid dreams. Stupidity without direction is the end of all; destiny itself. To be foolish as to expand the soul morally is to stave off self-destruction. And I believe that is what our friends discover in their meaningless feud, and what just may save them from themselves in the possible rekindling of their relationship. Farrell's protagonist becomes a hero in saving his friend from suicide by trying to kill him, and thereby saves himself in recognising his humanity and ridiculous love for animals. Gleeson's old grouch comes to see another day against his despair--as opposed to letting his music kill him--in witnessing a friend who cares for him presently.
There are far more folds and layers to The Banshees of Inisherin with the main complication of the narrative being our inability to really guess at what our characters are aiming at. I most definitely will be rewatching this with intrigue in the future. For now, I'll let this settle in as a brilliant slice of cinema without overcomplicating it.
Yes Ghassan
