Good morning 🐣

I hope I didn’t alienate too many of you last week. I figure if we can get through SHREK WEEK and Crystal Lake Orientation Week, then at this point we’re all bound by blood.

You’re welcome.

Today we keep the chaos going and dive headfirst into a double feature.

One of my favorite movies last year was “The Banshees of Inisherin,” a fable about two grown men, Pádraic (Colin Farrell, “Phone Booth”) and Colm (Brendan Gleeson, “Braveheart”), lifelong friends on a remote Irish island in the 1920s, as their friendship plummets into oblivion. One day, seemingly out of the blue, Colm decides he no longer wants to be friends with Pádraic. That’s it. That’s the plot. Pádraic’s a little slow and can’t grasp why, so Colm threatens that he’ll chop off his own finger each time Pádraic tries to talk to him. The small town (and a scene-stealing donkey) all have to deal with these men’s stubbornness as the Irish Civil War lights up the horizon. Though it sounds tragic and depressing — which it most certainly can be at times — and maybe even a little annoying (you might ask, do we really need to watch two men being stubborn for a whole two hours?), “Banshees” is witty and beautiful and a perfect analogue to all the bs that goes on in the world.

At one point Colm is asked, “Do you think God gives a damn about miniature donkeys?” What really haunts Colm throughout the movie is, will history give a damn about him? Everyone in town seems to be at peace with being nobodies on a tiny island in the middle of nowhere, but he wants to be remembered for something greater, so he desperately works on his music, even as he threatens to maim his own fiddle-playing hand. He’s the tortured artist, proudly waving his self-inflicted wounds for the world to see. He’s tiring and tired. Meanwhile, Colin Farrell as Pádraic is peak Farrell: those eyebrows can convey more emotion than some actors can in their entire careers.

The film is written and directed by the playwright Martin McDonagh and his dialogue in this absolutely sings, reminiscent of classic cinema with its punchy back-and-forthness and expert structure. He also did the film “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” as well as plays with names like “A Behanding in Spokane,” so “The Banshees of Inisherin” is par for the course.

And “Banshees” is actually a reunion: fourteen years earlier, McDonagh, Farrell, and Gleeson made another of my favorite films, “In Bruges.”

It’s also a dark comedy (slightly more emphasis on the comedy), about two hitmen laying low in Bruges, Belgium, after a botched job. In actuality their boss, Harry (Ralph Fiennes), had visited Bruges once on vacation and thinks it’s an excellent way for Farrell’s Ray to have one last good memory before he himself is offed. As Harry explains, “You’ve got to stick to your principles,” and killing kids, even if it’s an accident, even when you’re a hitman, is off limits, so Ray has got to go. Sorry, it isn’t personal; that’s just the way it is.

Just like “Banshees,” this movie wrestles with making horrible people not only sympathetic, but at times downright lovable. It deals with all those weighty subjects: integrity, honor, love, redemption, and accepting responsibility — but with a twist of the absurd and a devilish grin. At one point, Ray almost literally enters purgatory when he stumbles through what feels like a real-life Hieronymus Bosch painting. It has that patented dark humor and witty dialogue that McDonagh is known for, with lines like “What’s a lollipop man doing knowing karate?” or the repetition of “The alcoves” as doorways to the incongruity of life having both meaning and despair. Ray even narrates his own life out loud as if reading from this film’s very script when he gets into a fight with a tourist.

Both of these films are perfectly plotted, with interesting, idiotic characters, absurd dark humor, witty dialogue, gorgeous locations, and relatable themes if you feel like digging into ’em.

Until next time! 👋