The creative team from In Bruge reunites to create this startlingly beautiful and at first very humorous film. The fictional setting of Inisherin here is an absolutely gorgeous place and of course must have been deliberately chosen to contrast against the nowhere small of Bruges. But of course just because the island is beautiful, it doesn’t mean that life there is pleasant. The plot takes what seems like a minor feud between two friends to absurd extremes and no one can deny how engaging it is. Still I don’t believe that it’s as deep as it purports to be and fails to truly dissect its characters in any insightful way.
What begins as just another ordinary day for farmer Pádraic Súilleabháin is upended when his best friend and drinking buddy the musician Colm Doherty starts ignoring him. Pádraic is bewildered and so is everyone else in the village as they are used to seeing the two together. Eventually Colm explains that Pádraic is a dull and uninteresting person and he would rather spend the remaining years of his life composing music that will be remembered after his death. Siobhán, Pádraic’s unmarried sister who lives with him, and Dominic, a young man whose father is the abusive local policeman, try to advise him with no avail. When the depressed Pádraic persists in approaching Colm to strike up a conversation, the latter threatens to chop off one of his own fingers whenever Pádraic speaks to him. One night, a drunken Pádraic confronts Colm about him suddenly changing and preferring to be friends with the policeman instead. The next morning Colm does indeed cut off one of his fingers and throws it at the door of Pádraic’s house.
The village Pádraic lives in is so beautiful it looks heavenly to most of us. His work as a farmer, mainly raising animals from what we can see, doesn’t seem very onerous, leaving him with too much free time that he usually spends in the pub chatting aimlessly. Yet few of the people living there seem very happy. Without Colm’s company, Pádraic listlessly sits around staring at nothing. Siobhán who loves reading feels trapped on the islands and dreams of life on the mainland. Dominic stays over at Pádraic’s house to avoid being beaten by his father. Meanwhile the Irish Civil War rages on intermittently on the mainland yet most of the islanders don’t seem to care much about it. Colm actually seems content after breaking off his friendship with Pádraic but that is because he has the company of students from the mainland. The film seems to be making a point about how the insular and isolated society of the islanders saps them of drive and purpose. The juxtaposition of humor and horror in an idyllic setting works very well and it’s easy to see how this became a darling of all of the critics.
As engaging as it is, the film is ultimately very superficial. Colm’s abrupt ending of his friendship with Pádraic is dramatic but never really justified given what we later learn of his personality. There’s a delicious kind of frustration in seeing Pádraic being so dim that he can’t stop himself from approaching Colm over and over again despite the consequences. The twist at the end is shocking but also very contrived. Instead of being a deep examination of these characters in particular, the films wants to be more about these isolated communities in general, perhaps emphasizing the Irish character of this community. As other critics have pointed out, this feels like a shallow and cliched version of Ireland filled with stock characters with no serious interest in the history of the time. Even the name Inisherin itself roughly just means Irish island.
Like so many others, I was instantly drawn into the beauty of the premise and the absurdity of the feud between two people who should be friends. But this turned out to be another of those films that starts with a wonderful premise but then doesn’t really know where to go with it except let it play out for as long as possible. It’s entertaining and beautifully made but it’s far from a great film.