The Banshees of Inisherin

Inisherin in Martin McDonagh’s film is an invented island. Shooting began on Inishmore in the Aran islands and moved to Achill in County Mayo, so what you see is two coastlines joined, not one place. The music refuses the setting. In his own notes Carter Burwell writes that McDonagh hated the idea of old world Irish film music; the references the director sent were Brahms lieder, a Bulgarian song and an Indonesian gamelan piece. Burwell used celesta, harp, flute, marimba and gamelan and treated the film as a dark fairy tale, so the fiddle the landscape promises never arrives. The awards run both ways. At Venice it won two prizes: Colin Farrell the Volpi Cup for best actor, McDonagh the screenplay award. It has four BAFTAs: outstanding British film, original screenplay, supporting actor Barry Keoghan and supporting actress Kerry Condon. At the Academy Awards it took nine nominations and won none. Two of those sat in one category, supporting actor, where Brendan Gleeson and Keoghan were listed together; the film spreads its weight across four performances rather than one. A good fit if you treat the refusal to explain why a friend stopped speaking as the subject rather than a gap. Not for a viewer who cannot sit through scenes of self harm and an animal being hurt.