The Banshees of Inisherin, which is now streaming on HBO Max, dramatizes a painful experience many of us are all too familiar with: a friendship breakup.
Written and directed by Irish playwright Martin McDonagh (known for his critically-acclaimed films like In Bruges, Seven Psychopaths, and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), this dark comedy stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson (who also collaborated with McDonagh on In Bruges) as two former friends who get into a fight. More specifically, Brendan Gleeson suddenly decides he no longer wants to be friends with Colin Farrell, and Farrell is left reeling in the aftermath.
Though at times laugh-out-loud hilarious, The Banshees of Inisherin is also, like McDonagh’s other work, distinctly sad and cerebral. Taking place entirely on a small Irish island, the film has a light touch. In fact, it has such a light touch that sometimes you might not know what the heck is going on.
Don’t worry, we’re here to help. Read on for Decider’s The Banshees of Inisherinanalysis, including The Banshees of Inisherinplot synopsis and The Banshees of Inisherinending explained.
The Banshees of Inisherin time period:
The Banshees of Inisherin takes place in 1923 in Ireland. Specifically, it takes place in April 1923, as we know by the scene where Pádraic checks his calendar and realizes Colm ended their friendship on April 1, 1923. (But though Pádraic gets his hopes up, this is not an April Fools’ joke.) As is referenced in the film, this is the same time as the Irish Civil War, which was a conflict that followed the war Ireland fought for declaring its independence from British rule. The Irish Civil War conflict lasted from June 28, 1922, to May 24, 1923.
The Banshees of Inisherin plot explained:
The Banshees of Inisherin plot synopsis is pretty simple: An Irish guy named Colm (Brendan Gleeson) suddenly decides one day that he no longer wants to be friends with another Irish guy named Pádraic (Colin Farrell). Pádraic begs Colm to tell him what he did wrong, and Colm responds calmly that Pádraic did nothing wrong. It’s simply that Colm doesn’t like Pádraic anymore. After years of daily pub visits together, Colm formally requests that Pádraic leave him alone and never speak to him again.
Pádraic refuses to leave it at that. It’s not hard to find Colm, given that the two men live down the street from each other on an island of the coast of Ireland in 1923. Eventually, with a little help from his sister Siobhán (Kerry Condon), Pádraic learns that Colm has decided to stop being friends with him because he finds him dull, and he doesn’t want to waste his remaining years on this earth talking about nothing at the pub. Colm plays the fiddle, and he has ambitions to be a great musician. He tells Pádraic that since the two former friends stopped speaking, he has gotten much more work done on a song he considers his masterpiece.
Pádraic continues to try to speak to Colm, so Colm tells his former friend that either he leaves him alone, or Colm will cut off one of his left fingers for each time that Pádraic bothers him. Dominic (Barry Keoghan)—the young, troubled son of the local policeman—becomes Pádraic’s new drinking buddy, and encourages him to call Colm’s bluff on the finger threat.
But it wasn’t a bluff. A drunken Pádraic yells at Colm for no longer being a nice guy (or perhaps, he says, for never being a nice guy in the first place), while Colm argues back that no one will ever be remembered for being nice the same way a great musician will be remembered for their work. Colm seems to respect Pádraic’s argument, and even tells Dominic that he likes him again. But when a sober Pádraic finds Colm the next day to apologize and suggest they be friends again, Colm takes the drastic step of cutting off his index finger and throws it at Pádraic’s front door.
Colm learns to play the fiddle with only four fingers. Dominic tells Pádraic that Colm seemed to like Pádraic when he was drunkenly yelling at him, so Pádraic decides to try a “tough love” approach. He barges into Colm’s house and forces him to speak with him. Colm tells Pádraic he has finished his big song, called “The Banshees of Inisherin.” Pádraic congratulates him, and the two seem to be almost friends again… until Pádraic reveals that he tricked one of Colm’s musician friends into leaving the island, by telling the musician his dad was dying.
That night, Colm cuts off his remaining four fingers and throws them at Pádraic’s door. Pádraic’s beloved donkey, Jenny—whom he lets into the house when he’s sad—chokes on one of the fingers, and dies.
The Banshees of Inisherin ending explained:
Furious and grieving, Pádraic tells Colm that he will burn down his house at 2 p.m. the next day—the same time the two friends always used to head to the pub together. Being an animal lover, Pádraic tells Colm to leave his dog outside. Pádraic also tells Colm that he won’t check whether Colm is inside before he lights the match, but he hopes that he is.
Pádraic receives a letter from his sister inviting him to join her in a better life on the mainland. But he declines and instead follows through on his promise to burn down Colm’s house. After lighting the fire, he sees that Colm is, in fact, inside the house, simply sitting there as it burns. Pádraic leaves, and takes Colm’s dog to his house.
The policeman approaches Pádraic’s house to arrest him, but is intercepted by the old woman called Mrs. McCormick (Sheila Flitton). With a long, black cloak and a stick with a sharp hook on the end of it that resembles a scythe, Mrs. McCormick pretty clearly represents Death. And sure enough, she tells the policeman that his son Dominic is dead—his body was found drowned in the lake. Earlier in the film, we heard about someone who killed themselves in the lake, and it’s implied that Dominic committed suicide.
The next day, Pádraic finds Colm alive on the beach. Colm apologizes for inadvertently killing Jenny, and tells Pádraic he supposes they are even now, given that Pádraic burned down his house. Pádraic responds that they only would have been even if Colm burned with the house. Colm remarks that he hears the Civil War will end soon. Pádraic responds that they will be fighting again soon, he’s sure. “Some things there’s no moving on from,” he says. “And I think that’s a good thing.”
Pádraic walks away. Colm calls out to thank Pádraic for looking after his dog, and Pádraic responds, “Any time.” Colm, no longer able to play the fiddle, begins humming his song. With that, the movie ends.
The implication here is that Colm and Pádraic’s fighting is a metaphor for the Irish Civil War. Through their in-fighting, they destroyed themselves. Colm destroyed his fingers, rendering him unable to do the one thing he loved, playing music. Pádraic destroyed his chance at a better life by letting his grief and need for revenge get in the way of accepting his sister’s offer to come to the mainland. The two men are momentarily at a ceasefire, but, as Pádraic implies, will likely fight again soon. But they still have some semblance of civility, and Pádraic, deep down, is still a kind man willing to look after his neighbor’s dog.
Why did Colm cut off his fingers in The Banshees of Inisherin?
That really is the question, isn’t it? It doesn’t make sense! Why would he purposefully mutilate his hands if the reason he broke up with his BFF is to focus on being a great musician? The movie never explains it, but one theory is that Colm—who speaks to the priest about his “despair,” a coded word for depression—feels this pressure to be a “great” musician. He is obsessed with leaving behind a legacy, as he tells Pádraic in the pub. By cutting off his own fingers and claiming that Pádraic “made” him do it, he has found a way to take the pressure off himself to be a great musician.
It’s just a theory! In an interview with Indiewire, writer/director Martin McDonagh said he simply found the idea “interesting.” He said, “I thought it was interesting that an artist would threaten the thing that allows him to make art. Does that thing make him the artist?”
In a separate interview for Deadline, Gleeson remembered what McDonagh told him was the reasoning behind his character’s unusual penchant for self-mutilation: “He said it’s quite common for writers to wake up in a nightmare where they feel that their hand is no longer capable of writing. That we fear the loss of the thing that allows us to express ourselves, whatever it may be. Your voice if you’re a singer, or your memory if you’re an actor; we worry we’ll forget our lines. If that thing is threatened, it becomes about everything. So, I think my rationale was that Colm had made a commitment to risk everything in order to facilitate this space that he felt he needed to create properly.”
Hey, if I lived on a tiny Irish Ireland in 1923 with no internet, I might start cutting my fingers off, too.
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