Not For Worse
Do we undervalue friendships when we think there’s nothing worth ending them over?
Review by Whitney Rio-Ross
I love a good breakup movie. Whether the couple ends up back together or not, breakup stories are a powerful vehicle for character development and philosophical exploration. Plus, the dissolution of a relationship is a universal experience. We’ve all had our heart broken, right?
I’d say, yes, everyone I know has been through heartbreak due to a relationship ending. The problem is that not all those relationships were romantic, and that’s key to the typical breakup film. Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin, however, expands the breakup genre to the realm of friendship. According to McDonagh, friends can fall out of love, and the result can be devastating. (If this film weren’t also a goldmine of dark comedy, I couldn’t stomach the misery.)
Banshees tells the story of two friends living on a small island off the coast of Ireland during the Irish Civil War. Colm and Pádraic were best friends who spent nearly all their time together. The film begins, however, with Colm refusing to speak to Pádraic. Eventually, Colm tells Pádraic that he simply doesn’t like him anymore. The root of that dislike comes from their difference in intellect and interests. Colm is a fiddler and composer, introspective and artistic. Pádraic is an incurious farmer who doesn’t know the name Mozart and loves talking at length about his beloved animals. As Colm approaches old age, he’s begun to realize that he wants to spend his time working on music rather than chatting with Padraic. He mourns, “In twelve years, I’ll die with nothin’ to show for it but the chats I’ve had with a limited man.”
Pádraic has a difficult time accepting Colm’s desire to end things. Instead of staying out of Colm’s way, he is determined to continue the relationship, speaking to Colm despite his repeated requests to be left alone. To make Pádraic stop, Colm threatens to take disturbing, drastic measures. Thanks to Pádraic’s persistence, he makes good on the threats.
Colm is a selfish jerk and, as his methods to end the relationship eventually show, mentally unwell. His view of friendship has become utilitarian. As a dull and unartistic man, Pádraic doesn’t offer Colm the appreciative audience or creative fodder he has decided is necessary for his friendships. Colm pursues relationships with fellow musicians who meet his new standards, leaving Pádraic to watch their jam sessions from the other side of the pub. But Colm is not the only bad friend in this relationship.
Pádraic’s refusal to leave Colm alone reveals a profound selfishness of his own. McDonagh is brilliant to begin the film with the breakup and not show us the actual friendship. We get to discover the former dynamic by watching the characters in this new situation. At the beginning, it’s easy to see Colm as an unfeeling snob and Pádraic as a sweet, simple man. After Colm dumps him, his sister and the other pub regulars encourage him by calling him “nice” and “one of life’s good guys.” Pádraic identifies himself this way, too, assuming that because he is “a happy lad,” Colm has no right to end the friendship. Pádraic cares about reconciling with Colm (on Pádraic’s terms) far more than he cares about Colm’s wellbeing. We see this clearly when Pádraic’s sister suggests that Colm might be depressed. “That’s what I was thinking, that he’s depressed,” he tells her. “Well, if he is, he could at least keep it to himself, like. You know, push it down, like the rest of us.” We find out in a confessional scene that Colm has indeed been struggling with despair. It’s one thing to not be able to talk to your friend about your craft. It’s another to know you can’t talk to him about your internal struggles.
We shouldn’t frame relationships in terms of gain or loss.
I hate the Instagram therapy advice that we should remove ourselves from people “who aren’t serving us.” That’s Colm’s mindset and a recipe for a selfish loneliness. We shouldn’t frame relationships in terms of gain or loss. Over the last decade, though, I have noticed an overcorrection championed primarily by Christians—a theology of staying for staying’s sake. I credit it mostly to a spirit of culture war and a selective syllabus of Wendell Berry. I have watched friends stay in places, churches, and friendships that were harmful because they believed they were supposed to tough it out, that leaving would be some kind of Christian failure. Of course, we shouldn’t abandon our friends or community simply because living life together can be difficult. As long as your community is made of human beings, things will get hard at some point. Sometimes, though, holding on to certain relationships or community dynamics is in no one’s best interest.
If Pádraic and Colm had been in a romantic relationship, we would easily conclude that the two shouldn’t get back together simply based on the way they handle the breakup. (It gets dark—really dark.) In those situations, it doesn’t matter whose side we’re on or who needs to apologize. What matters is that these two people are making each other worse, and they need to separate in order not to destroy their souls.
We usually don’t have this attitude toward friendship, though. Some of this has to do with monogamy and how we must end a harmful romance in order to pursue a good one. We also don’t make sacred vows to continue relationship with friend or communities, aside from convents and monasteries. Still, monogamy isn’t the only limitation in relationships; we all have a limited amount of time and energy to spend with other people. I can have several friendships, but I only have one lifetime. I must choose with whom I will spend my days, and that choice will determine the content of my life. When Colm says he fears living a life of no more than “chats,” I was horrified. A life of good conversations with friends sounds rather wonderful to me. Yes, I would need some time alone for sanity and writing, but substantial conversations feed my soul and make my life feel worthwhile. Yet Pádraic does not offer that kind of company, and over time Colm grows bitter toward him, ending the relationship without any attempt at changing the dynamic. The dynamic had also been hurting Pádraic, as it allowed him to continue in his clinginess and never challenged him to seek the emotional depth that he avoids through pleasant but shallow and incessant chatting.
If we believe that friendship and community are truly important, we should be able to accept that those relationships are also the kind that can shape us profoundly, for the better or worse.
The film uses the repetition of trite words and phrases to a humorous effect, but the repetitive dialogue also reveals the community’s painfully limited vocabulary. Everyone says Colm can’t stop being friends with Pádraic because “it isn’t nice.” The whole island uses the word constantly, holding up niceness as a chief virtue. Yet no one attempts to define “nice” or “good” or “friend.” No one asks what these words mean or why they are important ideas. The lack of meaningful dialogue reveals an island-wide shallowness that only Pádraic’s clever, lonely sister notices.
The community seems to want peace between Colm and Pádriac, at first wanting Colm to be “nicer” and eventually wanting Pádraic to get over his heartbreak. They want to chat without the drama or depth of pain. Fittingly, we see the community take no interest in the Civil War, its purpose or the way it is affecting their neighbors on the next coast. Inisherin is a gorgeous, sunny spot with birdsong. Ireland is a gloomy, thundering shore in the distance. But neither offers true peace—one that allows for human suffering.
The Banshees of Inisherin warns against friendship and community without depth. Without the freedom to express one’s pain or needs in a relationship, without enough air to make room for other friends or creative pursuits, relationships rot and lead to animosity, which can feed on depth or shallowness. Maybe our belief that “niceness” means remaining close to someone no matter what and our insistence that we must stay on our island forever actually shows how we trivialize non-romantic relationships. We can recognize that leaving a lover is sometimes necessary, though devastating. If we believe that friendship and community are truly important, we should be able to accept that those relationships are also the kind that can shape us profoundly, for the better or worse. If it’s the latter, the kindest (and bravest) way forward may be to part ways with the friend or leave the island before we can only hate it.
Whitney Rio-Ross holds a Master’s in Religion and Literature from Yale Divinity School. Her writing has appeared in Sojourners, Reflections, America Magazine, LETTERS JOURNAL, The Cresset, St. Katherine Review, The Other Journal, and elsewhere. She is the author of the poetry chapbook Birthmarks and lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with her husband.
The Banshees of Inisherin was released on October 21, 2022 by Searchlight Pictures. It was directed and produced by Martin McDonagh. It is available to watch on a variety of streaming services.
