The Banshees of Inisherin

A really great piece in Slate about all this:

McDonagh himself has always sounded fairly noncommittal about his own claims to being an Irish writer; indeed, he has never—at least in interviews—seemed to give the concept all that much weight. In a 1998 conversation with the Irish critic and writer Fintan O’Toole, he said that “thinking about being Irish only came into my life when I decided to write Irish plays … It would be phony of me to say I have anything to do with Irish storytelling.” As off-the-cuff as these reflections are, they hint at something interesting and revealing about McDonagh’s work: that being an “Irish writer” might be a kind of choice, in the same way that it is a choice to work in a particular genre, such as crime or sci-fi, or Oscar-worthy drama.

As a metaphor it’s both vague and clumsy; for it to work, you’d have to think of the Irish Civil War was some kind of basically unfathomable squabble between former best friends, as opposed to a conflict over a treaty with the British government that granted only partial independence and divided Ireland into two political entities, to disastrous results. As a political allegory, it seems obviously retrofitted, tacked onto the narrative to add unearned resonance.

I don't think an artist has to fully understand their work on an intellectual level for it to be good. He still wrote and directed the thing, got the performances, etc, it's not really fair to say it's good in spite of him.

Separated into two trilogies, McDonagh's first six plays are located in and around County Galway, where he spent his holidays as a child

lol I didn't know about his "Irish plays" - what a pumper.

Came here to post that link. Mark O'C expresses precisely what I found so insufferable about the film.

I took the vague understanding of the Civil War as partly reflective of the island's isolation, they didn't really feel very connected to anything off the island anyway. (That it also apparently reflects McDonagh's own vague understanding of it doesn't necessarily change that. Although maybe it's unlikely that anyone in the country wouldn't have had an allegiance of some kind, I don't know.)

xxp

I think it is absolutely fair to say he is shit director (based on previous garbage he's made) and be surprised that this movie is likable despite having some ahistorical and absolute garbage ideas stitched into it.

I don't think an artist has to fully understand their work on an intellectual level for it to be good. He still wrote and directed the thing, got the performances, etc, it's not really fair to say it's good in spite of him.

I took the vague understanding of the Civil War as partly reflective of the island's isolation, they didn't really feel very connected to anything off the island anyway. (That it also apparently reflects McDonagh's own vague understanding of it doesn't necessarily change that. Although maybe it's unlikely that anyone in the country wouldn't have had an allegiance of some kind, I don't know.)

Many good points in that essay:

As a screenwriter, McDonagh evinces the theater-maker’s anxiety that the audience might go quiet, and never misses an opportunity to have a character make a humorous or provocative aside. You can always tell where you are supposed to gasp, and you can always tell when you’re supposed to be laughing—even, and especially, when you’re supposed to feel like you’re not supposed to be laughing.

OTM.

But as with Colm’s abrupt decision to end his friendship with Pádraic, no one seems to quite know what the fighting is all about. (“The free-state lads are executing a couple of the IRA lads—or is it the other way around?” says a character at one point.) As a metaphor it’s both vague and clumsy

yep

he has an extremely hokey and limited understanding of rural ireland, to the point of insult even raking into account he isnt dealing in realism

i think i posted about him previously that three billboards was merely his doing to america what he does to ireland

I disagree with the article a bit about the tropeyness of the characters, cos I thought that did work. It reminded me a bit of watching Slumdog Millionaire with my better half, who was pointing out all the references to tropes in classic Indian films that existed. So i don’t mind that as much as the writer did. But my original objections - the stageyness of some of the dialogue, the allegory not really working - are in accord with his, I think. Probably the most brutally otm take of that is when the observation is made that In Bruges features Irish characters - but they just happen to be Irish. It has nothing to tell us about the country or the people. And ofc, it stands on stellar performances.

he writes great parts in watchable movies with shite plots with idiotic broader points and yes he casts brilliantly or his dialogues just sparkles well

his profundity is the fauxest possible and the attempts demean all involved but especially any reviewer that approves of the attempt i think

the scenery is good tho

I think his humour is pretty dark and I was laughing at a few points in the film (to the surprise of my mother who thought it was sad), and the confrontation scene in the pub is classic: the spareness of what is said, the rest of what is unsaid, the performances.

It’s just…ugh.

yes he casts brilliantly

It's no secret that excellent actors can accentuate whatever is good and paper over the weaknesses in a poorly written script.

even so line by line he has jewels but not without the clunkers

its in the round its revealed as tripe usually imo

his ear for irish accents is a minor gripe for wider audiences im sure but let me tell you it has spoiled utterly more than one production and this is no different from clips ive seen

Sorry now

Sorry

I’ve met you

And you didn’t say “feck” every other word

Are you sure you’re from the west?

the odd clunker as i say

It felt more like a fable, not a real historical place, which I was fine with.

I don't think an artist has to fully understand their work on an intellectual level for it to be good.

?????

I think it's very common that artistic decisions are made on a more intuitive level, which is why some artists shouldn't or don't talk about their own work very much. Or, it's often in retrospect that artists intellectualize their own work. Overthinking it during creation can ruin it, or feel like it will.

fuck me, is this below average movie hack an "artist" now? I can't have that.

im pretty sure that distance would help with the fable element, certainly

i dont ask that his work be any better than seven psychopaths, which it isnt, but great monstrous performances do not great movies or plays make

It felt more like a fable, not a real historical place, which I was fine with

Yeah I don’t think the problem is that McDonagh is overthinking his work.

Yeah I totally get being too close to the subject matter, I've been on that side of it too

There's sort of a dream-logic feel too with the fingers

Yeah I totally get being too close to the subject matter, I've been on that side of it too

man is allowed have opinions whats the point of a civil war otherwise

Nahin civil about it

not with you involved begod

mainlanders whod have em

Yeah I totally get being too close to the subject matter, I've been on that side of it too

And yet, to continue to post such embarrassing opinions!

I've learned from those experiences that people aren't dumb or wrong for enjoying things just because it's operating on a different level for them.

I couldn't even really experience Whiplash or Treme because the specifics were so distracting, but it's fine if other people enjoy them without having had those specific experiences. Knowing too much about something almost invariable ruins a movie or show about it, lol.

it certainly ruined Garfield for me

Incredibly ignorant.

Ok

you know what, i just realized that i have been confusing Martin McDonagh with John Michael McDonagh, whose excellent Calvary with Gleeson (and the more problematic but still worth seeing War on Everyone) had kept me coming back to Martin McD after I hated 3 billboards (and got me into the theater for this one) because i felt like he had proven to be a capable craftsman. not so sure now!

I can't believe there is a fucking extended family of these useless cunts all doing the same job, good job they aren't plumbers!

not sure it works as plumbers promote the free flow of shit!!

(I enjoyed this movie. Just matching the current energy in here.)

lol I watched it 3 times!

lmao

John M McD's The Guard is a fairly decent film too!

Marty was an EP on that

what's the condition that describes when you really like a movie that is fairly bad? I watched Martin Eden about a dozen times even though I think it is objectively a badly written and rather daft movie.

visual masochism?

Banshees will have The Big Lebowski lasting power. On Halloween, instead of a Westerley zip-up sweater, we will fake cut off our fingers. Replace the white russian with a fiddle. In place of philosophy, we will overestimate our knowledge of the Irish Civil War.

no, because I'm talking about even though you know it's rubbish that you are watching but still find it an inexplicably an uplifting experience.

Cinemanabon

that sounds like nostalgia?

Regrettably, you can only cut off all your fingers once. Martin takes advantage.

i think i posted about him previously that three billboards was merely his doing to america what he does to Ireland

This is it. I remember someone on here saying about that film, "I prefer his stuff when it's set in Ireland"

Well, you would, not being from the place.

“People say you should only write what you know. But you only write what you know because you are too fucking stupid to make anything up.”

^^^

a quote from the "artist" himself on this

One of the parts of the essay that I kept thinking about was this:

W.B. Yeats and J.M. Synge, both Anglo-Irish—Irish, that is, but members of a Protestant ruling class descended from the original English colonial settlers—were among the most prominent of the Revival’s writers, and both contributed to this focus on rural poverty as the true soul of Irishness. As well-intentioned as the Abbey’s mission might have been as a contribution to Irish cultural self-consciousness, and as aesthetically powerful as the plays often were, this stuff unwittingly reasserted England’s colonial hegemony by staging Ireland as an unsophisticated peasant culture.

Yeats did not rate Pearse highly, believing that he had been made dangerous by 'the vertigo of self-sacrifice. As a young man, Pearse had thought badly of Yeats, dismissing him as 'a mere English poet of the third or fourth rank', but later recognised his literary achievement and invited him to speak to his pupils at St. Enda's.

Pearse was probably responsible for much of the text of the 1916 proclamation while his complex personality and passionate rhetoric still define the Rising for many people.

A fifth leader, James Connolly, is named in the rousing final stanza. Connolly, a socialist thinker and Trade Union organiser, is not mentioned in the body of the poem. With his conservative leanings, Yeats would not have had much time for Connolly's politics, but did recognise his importance as did Yeats's friend, George Russell (AE) who admired Connolly and felt that he had been the main inspiration behind the Rising: