“Haven’t heard any rifle fire from the mainland in a day or two. I think they’re coming to the end of it. I’m sure they’ll be at it again soon enough, aren’t you? Some things there’s no movin’ on from. And I think that’s a good thing.”
The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) Dir. Martin McDonagh
I don’t know how to describe the way banshees of inisherin is affecting me. It tells an extremely specific kind of story, the sudden realisation that you are now strangers with a person you love. Not because of a fight, or because of illness or death, but because you didn’t actually know them as well as you thought you did. Padraic says to Colm - “maybe you were always mean.”
And despite this estrangement, this person you love is still active in your life. Colm helps Padraic home after the cop punches him, and then leaves without a word, indifferent to Padraic crying. Colm apologises for the death of Penny, and the apology feels genuine, but he doesn’t offer anything else. He even thanks Padraic for caring for his dog. There is some hint of intimacy present, but it’s backed by nothing. The person you love cares for you still, but they’re a stranger, they feel alien. And the way that they hurt you throughout this process feels as grotesque and impossible to anticipate as Colm’s brutal self mutilation - which we then seen actively prevents him from playing music at the end of the movie, despite his stated reason for suddenly dropping Padraic is that he wants to focus on his music. There is a very particular kind of interpersonal violence here, one where someone, suddenly, behaves so irrationally, in a way that could never have possibly occurred to you to anticipate, that they become this void, this alien that you don’t know what to do with. Colm tells Padraic to leave him alone, and Padraic doesn’t listen, but Colm breaks that rule on multiple occasions as well. There’s no underlying rational pattern to his behaviour - he just becomes a stranger, still present in your life in some way while remaining alien.
And we see Padraic lose people in multiple ways - his sister leaves, his donkey dies. These are “straightforward” kinds of griefs. And at the end of the movie he is completely alone with Colm, where he comes to the conclusion that the only way to respond to Colm’s insane, self-destructive, horrific behaviour is to behave the same way, making a promise at the end of the film that the both of them will end up dead because of this, that they will kill each other.
And I remember while watching the movie, the entire time I was hoping for a reveal of some kind. That Colm would be losing his mind, or dying, or that there was some other larger conflict hidden beneath the surface, but it never comes. And I like that the movie refuses to ever rationalise or explain his behaviour, instead going to considerable lengths to demonstrate that there is no possible justified explanation you could give for why Colm would decide to start cutting his fingers off to spite Padraic for trying to talk to him, or even why you would suddenly one day tell your closest friend you don’t like them and don’t want them to ever talk to you again in the first place.
Suddenly, violently unknowing a person you love in this precise way is something I haven’t seen explored in a lot of other art before. It’s the exact kind of experience that makes it impossible to grieve or move on from, the kind of thing that drives you to light their house on fire because you don’t know what else to do
There’s this part in the film, it’s a great part, where the man is explaining to his German friend why it’s so difficult for him to describe the taste of tea. He says, “There’s no language for it. There are no words to adequately express the mysterious nature of tea”. And his German friend, who’s just standing right beside him with a cup of tea, says, “Yes, but I imagine things like you are walking through a forest, and there are leaves on the ground, and it just had rained, and the rain has stopped, and it’s damp, and you walk, and somehow, that is all in this tea”. I mean, I loved that so much. I loved that so much. “Somehow, that is all in this tea”. God, I watched it over and over again.
so i started watching the fran lebowitz show and .. yeah. everyone say thank u fran <3
“…people are consistently told “What can you learn about your own life from this novel, what lessons will this teach you? How can you use this…” This is a philistine idea. This is beyond vulgar. It’s an awful way to approach anything. It should take you away. A book should not be a mirror, it’s supposed to be a door.”
i love you singers whose vocals sound desperate i love you musicians who sound like if you don’t get this song out you’re going to explode i love you songs that sound like they’re dragging the vocalist with them 80 miles per hour down the highway tied to the back of a truck i love you voice cracks in emotional songs i love you unique voices i love you music that disturbs the comfortable and comforts the disturbed
“The less you eat, drink and read books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public-house; the less you think, love, theorize, paint, sing, fence, etc., the more you save—the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor dust will devour—your capital. The less you are, the more you have; the less you express your own life, the greater is your alienated life—the greater is the store of your estranged being.
Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
“nothing matters so do what you love and be kind” is the single most viscerally impactful message i have ever gleaned from consuming media and i’m going to live every day with that kind of hopepunk nihilism for the rest of my life
No it’s not escapism it’s just that every night I stay up reading until I can’t keep my eyes open anymore so that I don’t get the time to overthink about reality.
“The daily routine of most adults is so heavy and artificial that we are closed off to much of the world. We have to do this in order to get our work done. I think one purpose of art is to get us out of those routines. When we hear music or poetry or stories, the world opens up again. We’re drawn in — or out — and the windows of our perception are cleansed, as William Blake said. The same thing can happen when we’re around young children or adults who have unlearned those habits of shutting the world out.”
