gTHE SPIRITS OF THE ISLAND
Type: surreal-political drama
Director: Martin McDonagh. With Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon, Barry Keoghan, Gary Lyndon, Pat Shortt, Sheila Flitton, Brid Ní Neachtain
Awarded in Venice and ai Golden Globes (again for best actor and screenplay) and now nominated for nine Oscars (with excellent chances of winning), Martin McDonagh’s film tells the strange bond between the young and naive Pádraic (Colin Farrell, very good) and the elderly Colm with a passion for music (Brendan Gleeson, equally good).
At first, this offbeat comedy looks like a funny costumed variation on the inexplicability of human actions (Colm suddenly decides not to talk to Pádraic anymore) to then fall into an increasingly violent and bloody feud.
Impossible then not to think of the fratricidal struggle whose distant echo is heard coming from the mainland (we are in 1923, in the imaginative island of Inisherin) and that never seems to stop tearing apart Ireland, from which only death or the choice to leave are painful escape routes.
Colin Farrell in a scene from the film (Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2022 20th Century Studios).
At first it amuses us by telling the colorful villagers which form the chorus to the surreal dispute between the two friends, to then immerse themselves in that mixture of madness, stubbornness and mystery that knows how to restore the spirit of an Ireland that does not want to betray its roots but from which it also feels suffocated.
For those who want to dig into human senselessness.
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