What survives a friendship?
In Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin, one man suddenly tells his best friend that he simply doesn’t like him anymore. That almost absurdly simple premise unfolds into a powerful story about friendship, violence, loneliness, art, kindness, and the things we hope to leave behind.
Full spoiler warning: This video discusses major characters, events, and the ending of The Banshees of Inisherin.
In this episode of Afterworld Movie Nights, we explore the film as a kind of modern fairy tale. There’s a dreamlike island painted in impossible greens and blues, severed fingers that feel like tokens of a curse, repeated phrases that echo oral storytelling, and emotions that become shockingly physical.
Why does Colm destroy the very fingers he needs to create the music he hopes will outlive him? Why does Pádraic keep asking for an explanation when no explanation could make the violence seem reasonable? Why does the end of a friendship feel as devastating as a romantic breakup? And what does Siobhán offer as an alternative to the increasingly destructive path the two men take?
Along the way, we explore:
• Inisherin as an imaginary, almost fairy-tale island
• Carter Burwell’s score
• the connection between fairy tales, bodily violence, and Cinderella
• Pádraic and Colm’s friendship as a shared world built through conversation
• repetition, gossip, and oral storytelling in McDonagh’s dialogue
• why the severed fingers are more than simple symbols
• Siobhán as an example of a different way to leave
• kindness, niceness, and what it means for goodness to endure
• Colm’s obsession with creating art that will outlive him
• the question at the heart of the film: What do we actually leave behind in other people?
The Banshees of Inisherin may begin with “I just don’t like you no more,” but the relationship it supposedly ends refuses to disappear. Instead, it changes both men until neither can return to the person he was before.
Maybe that’s what ultimately survives a friendship—not the friendship itself, but the person it helped you become.
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