On a quiet island alongside the Western Irish coast, a small population that seemed as rooted to its soil as their crops and animals suddenly becomes the witness of a bitter, furious conflict. Two close friends – intense Colm Doherty (Brendan Gleeson) and easygoing Pádraic Súilleabháin (Colin Farrell) – have dissolved their lifelong closeness.
To be precise, not two friends – Colm is the one who breaks the bond, and the once-cheerful Pádraic, hurt and confused, can’t fathom what happened.
“I think just the simplicity of telling a story about a breakup, really,” said writer and director Martin McDonagh about what he aimed for at a recent video press conference. “And to be as truthful and show the pain of that.”
A four-time nominee, including for The Banshees of Inisherin, and a Golden Globe winner – in 2018, with Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri, Best Screenplay – McDonagh was interested in bringing together the two actors that launched his career with his first feature, In Bruges (2008): Gleeson and Farrell.
“Colin and Brendan love each other and they’re playing the opposite of that,” he added. “It was great to have that, you know, being founded on the care and love that they have for each other.”
The idea to have an isolated community at a time of conflict – 1923, during the Irish Civil War – creates a special tiny universe ready to change…or not. Most of the characters – Pádraic, the brutal policeman, the scary Mrs. McCormick, the innkeeper, and the other farmers – are, in fact, islands where nothing can or should change.
Could it be the echoes of the guns from “the land” (mainland)? Or could it just be that some islanders are ready to embrace a change: Colm and Pádraic’s sister, Siobhán (Kerry Condon, also a longtime friend of McDonagh)?
Things start peacefully and warm, amid the beauty of the Aran Islands that became the film’s location (two, actually: Inishmore for the ample horizons, and Achill Island, for the inn and other houses). As the forces of change and permanence clash, Colm and Pádraic become a sort of tempest in themselves, escalating beyond animosity.
“It speaks to the nature of Martin’s material that we always find it really hilariously funny at the beginning,” said Brendan Gleeson, at the same press conference. “ And then we go into rehearsal and it turns out to be not quite so funny at all.”
“(Brendan) hasn’t got a dishonest bone in his body,” added Colin. “There’s no dishonesty in him as a man and there’s no dishonesty in him as an artist. You know what I mean? So every time he goes to work, it’s just an extraordinary experience to watch what he’s doing.”
And in the end, the innocents suffer.