I loved the movie, although Colm’s self-inflicted violence is plainly psychotic. I got the impression of a man so angry at himself for allowing ennui to trump his ambitions until most of his life had passed him by, he was lashing out AND lashing in. Barry Keoghan is a genius, and Kerry Condon takes what could have been the stereotypical “exasperated woman” role and finds every nuance in the script as well as some nuances the writer didn’t even put there.
And yeah, it’s VERY Irish (as am I on my father’s side of the family), both morose and fey.
I went off on a tangent early in the film that was difficult to overcome. I had a nagging feeling that something was off about the lighting. Then there was a scene that was supposedly lit by a fireplace, but both character's faces were evenly lit, and there was no flickering light as there would be from a fire. Then there was flickering light, then there wasn't. The flickering light came and went from cut to cut. Don't get me wrong, I'm not expecting every film to be Barry Lyndon, but that was too much. For the rest of the movie I couldn't help thinking about the lighting, which was mostly okay, but I had my suspicions, and that no doubt took away from other aspects of the film that were, or might have been, better done.
But I tried to like it as it seems like a movie I should like. As you note, the acting was great, but I had some troubles with the story. I told myself it was perhaps the best takedown of the "nice guy" I've ever seen, though I doubt that was its intent.
I spent some time drinking with some Irish folk in London way back when, and the more soused they got, the more likely they were to get into heated arugments about shit that happened hundreds of year ago. Maybe Americans from the south do that, but I've never experienced it in the states.
So I figure the story was some kind of metaphor for The Troubles. Maybe one side stopped liking the other,and the other side didn't take it well and couldn't let it go, so the one side started doing self-destructive violent things, beginning a cycle of violence that spiraled out of control? I sure as hell hope it's something like that, even though it went over my head. Otherwise I'd say that whole drama was a bit cold and pointless, despite the warm, fake lighting.
I've seen enough TV ads for it to add up to the full running time of the movie, and they didn't inspire anything in me except a desire to see less, and not more, of these people. Great review, though.
You nailed this, the problems, without coming out and saying it ultimately fails with this: "...it’s as if The Playboy of the Western World ended like Taxi Driver instead of as it does, with the grand joke of the premise blossoming into the sublime."
The problem I have is audience reaction. I dislike coming down on the side of everybody knows Mozart's name and also remembers the nice people they know who have died, but that's where I am. I feel too many people watch a film like this and reflect on all the layers but then as I do, walk down the street past the utterly hopeless unhoused humans who ought to be helped as if they were on fire or a war going on in the background or a friend cutting off his own fingers to spite his friend.
Part of me resents anyone who makes entertainment or art that shoves matters at me such that I have to distance myself from it. I feel as if I am being made to watch gladiatorial combat with commentary on the neuroscience and the medical aspects of each savage assault and every wound.
And who am I in this spectacle? It helps perhaps that I am reading James Baldwin. But the sense of humor is lost on me, even with all the fine touches, the amazing performances. I admit I am haunted by this film but I am not entertained, and the bread sticks in my craw. Not my circus and I refuse to be a monkey any longer.
I saw this in the theater late fall or early winter last year. Roy’s review got at what the main puzzle of the film is: the change of mood and tone. Colm’s promise cut his own fingers off is almost shocking in its effect in its absurdity, its disproportionality and the target of that act of violence. Colm wrongly believes, perhaps, that if Padraic truly wanted to act as a friend, he wouldn’t bother Colm anymore in order to spare his friend the pain and loss.
This turn of the plot is obviously meant to be allegorical or symbolic, but damned if I can say what it symbolizes. Perhaps it’s an allegory of what happens to an artist who eschews, I don’t know, close human relationships or the vulnerability of exposing one’s soul to themselves or others. If I remember correctly, Colm hangs out with the asshole cop (that’s not just Irish, faith and begorrah!). Art dies in the shadow of oppression, I guess.
As a side note, if McDonagh had wanted to go all-Irish on our eyes, ears and asses, he would have had Colm evoke the name of the great harpist Turlough O’Carolan as a name that outlives his person.
Seems a lot like “In Bruges” but in Ireland, same writer, same director, same leads, same resort to violence for shock appeal. How many writer/directors watched Tarantino and said, “I can do that” and could but shouldn’t have?
i really dig the movie, and even the fingers didn't feel grim or off-tone to me, because the movie is - as Ralph Fiennes' "In Bruges" character might say, "like a fookin' fairy tale." It's best seen as having a dreamy folktale logic where the surreal and the mundane sit side by side without incongruity. Weird comparison, but it reminds me of Miyazaki that way: sure, people might turn into pigs or your house could be haunted by dust-sprites or someone can throw their fingers at you and it's bad but not *impossible*, just something that happens.
Condon's a marvel, and the joy of her performance for me is that she seems to know she's in a folktale, but wants to exist in the real world instead.
Farrell is great and i hope he gets the Oscar, but for me it would be a joint award for both "Banshees" and his subtler but equally incredible performance in the unjustly under-watched "After Yang."
My sister, who was so-so on the film, mentioned that the first piece of music we hear is her "favorite Bulgarian song." So there's your forget-the-Irish. Meanwhile, Colin Farrell is always great, isn't he?
I had the same reaction to this movie, in every detail (without the support of a deeper knowledge of Irish literature, though I have gotten drunk with some younger Irish men. Lesson learned: don't try to keep up). The violence is obviously the point of the movie and what sends it irredeemably off its seeming rails carefully built in the first half. Life is feckin hard, and love will break your heart, apparantly. Maybe I was hoping for a little more than that.
Here I was, hoping Roy would evoke his acolytes to bring their favorite Irish humors, for which I've been hoarding Brendan Behan's explanation of the difference between prose and poetry...
I'm here, in the shallow end, whenever all y'all are done with the deep dives.
Great review. I'm a big fan of Brendan Gleeson, and maybe it's that at my advanced age I can do without certain levels of grim, but from what I've read about this movie I'm much more inclined to go watch "The Guard"* again. Me mither being a Murtha from Cork (where it seems all Irish immigrants came from according to the Ellis Island functionaries), I suppose it's my duty, but please don't make me.
After seeing "Hangman" performed the night before they shut down NYC, I've been superstitiously dodging the inevitability of "Banshees..." I guess it's time!
I loved the movie, although Colm’s self-inflicted violence is plainly psychotic. I got the impression of a man so angry at himself for allowing ennui to trump his ambitions until most of his life had passed him by, he was lashing out AND lashing in. Barry Keoghan is a genius, and Kerry Condon takes what could have been the stereotypical “exasperated woman” role and finds every nuance in the script as well as some nuances the writer didn’t even put there.
And yeah, it’s VERY Irish (as am I on my father’s side of the family), both morose and fey.
Now that's an idea. A Flann O'Brien movie. I'd watch anyone who would give At Swim-Two-Birds a go.
(An aside, and just my opinion, but Barry Fitzgerald's clownishness is *very* restrained in "The Naked City.")
"it’s as if The Playboy of the Western World ended like Taxi Driver instead of as it does, "
That's a great line!
I went off on a tangent early in the film that was difficult to overcome. I had a nagging feeling that something was off about the lighting. Then there was a scene that was supposedly lit by a fireplace, but both character's faces were evenly lit, and there was no flickering light as there would be from a fire. Then there was flickering light, then there wasn't. The flickering light came and went from cut to cut. Don't get me wrong, I'm not expecting every film to be Barry Lyndon, but that was too much. For the rest of the movie I couldn't help thinking about the lighting, which was mostly okay, but I had my suspicions, and that no doubt took away from other aspects of the film that were, or might have been, better done.
But I tried to like it as it seems like a movie I should like. As you note, the acting was great, but I had some troubles with the story. I told myself it was perhaps the best takedown of the "nice guy" I've ever seen, though I doubt that was its intent.
I spent some time drinking with some Irish folk in London way back when, and the more soused they got, the more likely they were to get into heated arugments about shit that happened hundreds of year ago. Maybe Americans from the south do that, but I've never experienced it in the states.
So I figure the story was some kind of metaphor for The Troubles. Maybe one side stopped liking the other,and the other side didn't take it well and couldn't let it go, so the one side started doing self-destructive violent things, beginning a cycle of violence that spiraled out of control? I sure as hell hope it's something like that, even though it went over my head. Otherwise I'd say that whole drama was a bit cold and pointless, despite the warm, fake lighting.
I've seen enough TV ads for it to add up to the full running time of the movie, and they didn't inspire anything in me except a desire to see less, and not more, of these people. Great review, though.
You nailed this, the problems, without coming out and saying it ultimately fails with this: "...it’s as if The Playboy of the Western World ended like Taxi Driver instead of as it does, with the grand joke of the premise blossoming into the sublime."
The problem I have is audience reaction. I dislike coming down on the side of everybody knows Mozart's name and also remembers the nice people they know who have died, but that's where I am. I feel too many people watch a film like this and reflect on all the layers but then as I do, walk down the street past the utterly hopeless unhoused humans who ought to be helped as if they were on fire or a war going on in the background or a friend cutting off his own fingers to spite his friend.
Part of me resents anyone who makes entertainment or art that shoves matters at me such that I have to distance myself from it. I feel as if I am being made to watch gladiatorial combat with commentary on the neuroscience and the medical aspects of each savage assault and every wound.
And who am I in this spectacle? It helps perhaps that I am reading James Baldwin. But the sense of humor is lost on me, even with all the fine touches, the amazing performances. I admit I am haunted by this film but I am not entertained, and the bread sticks in my craw. Not my circus and I refuse to be a monkey any longer.
I saw this in the theater late fall or early winter last year. Roy’s review got at what the main puzzle of the film is: the change of mood and tone. Colm’s promise cut his own fingers off is almost shocking in its effect in its absurdity, its disproportionality and the target of that act of violence. Colm wrongly believes, perhaps, that if Padraic truly wanted to act as a friend, he wouldn’t bother Colm anymore in order to spare his friend the pain and loss.
This turn of the plot is obviously meant to be allegorical or symbolic, but damned if I can say what it symbolizes. Perhaps it’s an allegory of what happens to an artist who eschews, I don’t know, close human relationships or the vulnerability of exposing one’s soul to themselves or others. If I remember correctly, Colm hangs out with the asshole cop (that’s not just Irish, faith and begorrah!). Art dies in the shadow of oppression, I guess.
As a side note, if McDonagh had wanted to go all-Irish on our eyes, ears and asses, he would have had Colm evoke the name of the great harpist Turlough O’Carolan as a name that outlives his person.
Seems a lot like “In Bruges” but in Ireland, same writer, same director, same leads, same resort to violence for shock appeal. How many writer/directors watched Tarantino and said, “I can do that” and could but shouldn’t have?
i really dig the movie, and even the fingers didn't feel grim or off-tone to me, because the movie is - as Ralph Fiennes' "In Bruges" character might say, "like a fookin' fairy tale." It's best seen as having a dreamy folktale logic where the surreal and the mundane sit side by side without incongruity. Weird comparison, but it reminds me of Miyazaki that way: sure, people might turn into pigs or your house could be haunted by dust-sprites or someone can throw their fingers at you and it's bad but not *impossible*, just something that happens.
Condon's a marvel, and the joy of her performance for me is that she seems to know she's in a folktale, but wants to exist in the real world instead.
Farrell is great and i hope he gets the Oscar, but for me it would be a joint award for both "Banshees" and his subtler but equally incredible performance in the unjustly under-watched "After Yang."
My sister, who was so-so on the film, mentioned that the first piece of music we hear is her "favorite Bulgarian song." So there's your forget-the-Irish. Meanwhile, Colin Farrell is always great, isn't he?
I had the same reaction to this movie, in every detail (without the support of a deeper knowledge of Irish literature, though I have gotten drunk with some younger Irish men. Lesson learned: don't try to keep up). The violence is obviously the point of the movie and what sends it irredeemably off its seeming rails carefully built in the first half. Life is feckin hard, and love will break your heart, apparantly. Maybe I was hoping for a little more than that.
Still mad this movie got snubbed for a Best Supporting Donkey nom
Here I was, hoping Roy would evoke his acolytes to bring their favorite Irish humors, for which I've been hoarding Brendan Behan's explanation of the difference between prose and poetry...
I'm here, in the shallow end, whenever all y'all are done with the deep dives.
Great review. I'm a big fan of Brendan Gleeson, and maybe it's that at my advanced age I can do without certain levels of grim, but from what I've read about this movie I'm much more inclined to go watch "The Guard"* again. Me mither being a Murtha from Cork (where it seems all Irish immigrants came from according to the Ellis Island functionaries), I suppose it's my duty, but please don't make me.
*written by John Michael McDonagh, Martin's brother, no less. If you haven't seen it, here's a taste: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1540133/quotes/qt3121425
After seeing "Hangman" performed the night before they shut down NYC, I've been superstitiously dodging the inevitability of "Banshees..." I guess it's time!