NOTE: This piece contains no spoilers for The Banshees of Inisherin that weren’t revealed in its marketing.
The Banshees of Inisherin opens with an odd scene. Pádraic (Colin Farrell) arrives at the home of his buddy, Colm (Brendan Gleeson). The two always hit the local pub at this hour together, but Colm does not show up on this day. When Pádraic knocks and peeks in the window, Colm is there, but he refuses to acknowledge the knocks. Eventually, a bewildered Pádraic leaves to drink his pint alone and start getting to the bottom of this mystery.
No explanations for Colm’s behavior make sense to Pádraic. His friend’s sudden coldness is an enigma. When Pádraic arrives home hours later and confides in his librarian sister, Siobhán (Kerry Condon), she makes light of the situation.
“Maybe Colm just doesn’t like you anymore,” she posits with a sly grin. “Maybe he doesn’t want to be friends with you anymore.”
Both characters laugh at this ridiculous hypothetical. After all, such a thought is beyond the possibility for two men who have spent hours together daily for decades, right? Right? It would have to be. How could someone just wake up one day and decide “I don’t want to be friends with my closest friend anymore.”
Unfortunately for Pádraic, Siobhán’s joke proves prescient. Colm doesn’t like Pádraic anymore.
Colm no longer wants to be friends with Pádraic.
*****
As I first got into watching The Banshees of Inisherin, the very conflict at its center terrified me. Colm’s revocation of their friendship defies the trajectory we apply to the longest bonds in our lives. We expect that those relationships that stand the test of time will endure. We anticipate that the connection will remain constant, if not strengthen, as time continues moving forward.
I have suffered from severe abandonment issues for most of my life. Unlike Pádraic, I have always been painfully cognizant of the finity of relationships. Meticulously raised to be hyper-aware of other people, I learned to compulsively meet their needs in order to preserve those bonds. Although conveyed in fewer words, that governing philosophy matches the key advice disseminated by the teaching program I did.
“Make yourself indispensable,” the professors told us. “Say ‘yes’ to everything. Become your secretary’s favorite person. Wave to your administrator at every event you attend. Make them notice you and value you.”
The thought process matches intuition, of course. Larger and more frequent contributions buy goodwill and curry favor. That reliability says “I am reliable” and that investment says “I am invested.” It’s a “show-don’t-tell” scenario. It’s intentional direct characterization. A school doesn’t want to lose reliable, invested people. When you demonstrate reliability and investment, by the transitive property, a school doesn’t want to lose you.
Ditto for friends. Being a generous, compassionate friend makes being your friend the path of least resistance. There’s an ease to being around people like that. Others want to be around generous, kind people because they make others’ lives a little bit better and a little bit easier. Nobody wants a taker or a jerk in their orbit.
From what we see of Pádraic in those early scenes, he seems like good enough company. An agreeable chap by all accounts, he seems attentive to his friend. He shows great love to his donkey. He gets along with the others living on their tiny island of Inisherin. There is nary a bad bone in his body, and Farrell plays that beautifully. Pádraic is a puppy dog with a simple life and simple tastes. His ambitions stretch no further than convincing Siobhán to let the donkey sleep inside their shared home. Objectionable traits in this harmless man seem unlikely.
Thus, in light of how we are shown Pádraic, Colm’s rejection feels unfair and cruel. We get so much more of Pádraic than we do Colm, that our empathy tilts toward him with sufficient force to destabilize a pinball machine. Pádraic’s situation is unfair, imparted upon him without cause by Colm. What had he ever done to deserve this from an increasingly cold and irrational man he, only 24 hours prior, would have called his closest chum?
I felt deeply for Pádraic. The arbitrariness of their friendship’s crumbling tapped into every rejection I had felt, every unanswered message and every person who just let go of me, who outgrew me. Moreover, pondering his circumstances channeled familiar fears for me. When a message goes unanswered for even a brief interval, I catastrophize, spiraling into self-incrimination over every vaguely problematic thing I have ever done that might have prompted apparent rejection. Social media was like this for me, too: on the rare occasions I added someone on a platform, receiving no response was akin to a speculative knife to my gut. When you work so hard to please other people, everything short of affection is recrimination.
Projecting these experiences onto Farrell’s character, I found myself growing cold toward Colm. My antagonist was the man who would revoke a lifetime of friendship on a whim. And not just revoke it—threaten and harass poor Pádraic for struggling to navigate such a severe overnight change. I resented Colm for exercising the power every entrant into a relationship has to dissolve it at any time. No matter how aware (and theoretically supportive) I am of such a move, it just felt unfair.
Pádraic hadn’t meant any harm. Not to anyone. How could Colm be so desperate to shut the guy out?
Who does that?
*****
The more I watched, though, the more my empathy for Colm grew. No matter how much pity I felt for Pádraic, it was Colm whose situation I understood best because I have been in his shoes and made similar decisions.
I’ve done so multiple times.
Trying to be kind to everybody has a cost, you see. Most people just smile and appreciate the kindness, but some people experience so little of it that it sticks with them. They fail to notice the breadth of people on the receiving end of that offered kindness. They feel special and validated by warmth and generosity offered automatically and without discrimination. They see it as an invitation for a greater bond. They project what they desire into what is given.
Toeing the line between perfunctory and genuine kindness is something I carefully calibrate these days. I struggled with navigating that line for a long time, believing that professional compassion was an oxymoron. Among the only things about Challenge Day that bothered me was its polishing: facilitators’ stories had to be packaged purposefully. As one-day guests of a school or community, every word needed to serve the program’s greater goals. This seemed antithetical, though: how could one compel authenticity and vulnerability with manufactured authenticity and performative vulnerability? I vowed to never follow that outline, and I never have.
But the lesson I needed to learn was that there is a cost to complete authenticity. People receive it in different ways. Some take it and run with it like a kite, inspired to open up and share in my image…but others miss that goal of inspiration and, instead, misconstrue my words and empathy as personal messages. I am speaking to them, among others, but they believe I am speaking to them. Combine this with my overarching edicts to be kind and generous and to listen and comfort and connect and, well, some people really want to hold onto that feeling. I understand why. It feels wonderful to be cared about and listened to.
Early on in my career, I didn’t know how to enunciate this idea. I was a broad strokes guy with a big heart that aimed to be open to everyone. When people became attached to me, I didn’t know how to help them understand that offering personal connection didn’t mean I wanted to be their friend.
Even writing that sentence felt like torture! Imagine trying to communicate it to a person who couldn’t fully grasp the nuance of that distinction.
Imagine explaining it to Pádraic.
Except I didn’t have to. I remembered the weekly phone calls on Friday nights that were rarely engaging. At first, they had been—I was undeterred by emotional labor—but soon, any time I disagreed on any point, big or small, he got flustered. These phone calls were meant to be sturdy validations of the connection he sought, not evidence of potential chasms. My goal was just to offer kindness, to bandaid over the things his life lacked, not to upset him, so I learned to just blandly agree. For weeks I barely strung a complex sentence together, but soon he noticed I wasn’t invested in our “discussions” and that frustrated him instead. This meant I had to be fully attentive to his every word or risk offense.
But each week’s call got harder and harder to stomach. Some weeks I would ignore my phone, but then he would call the house phone. (I ignored that I hadn’t given him that number.) I couldn’t escape it. I began to dread Friday nights as the workiest work I did, a time when my exhaustion from a busy week of school and baseball became amplified by the existential exhaustion of feigning friendship. To be clear: I cared about this person. I wanted him to be happy. But I didn’t want to be tethered to him. And I didn’t want to wear myself down talking to him.
He was an extra dose of gravity. I felt flattened by his voice and presence in my life.
Eventually, when my inability to articulate a meaningful argument about some cause or game frustrated him, I finally admitted that the phone calls were too much for me. I confessed to being depleted on Fridays, and I admitted to feeling stressed by them because our interests weren’t aligned. In my mind, this was an unambiguous evaluation: I don’t want to communicate with you. He understood, he said.
Instead we would get together each month for lunch.
Instead he would send lengthy emails about increasingly difficult and uncomfortable topics.
Instead he would visit after school and chat in person.
Instead he would propose elaborate adventures for us to pursue.
Instead he would drive by my parents’ house to see if I was home.
Impervious to all of this was a simple fact: I still cared about the guy. I wanted him to be happy and fulfilled. I worried about him and, since I was still praying then, I included him in those prayers each night too. I loved the guy, the same way I love so many people. But I didn’t love having him in my life, and, slowly, his presence moved from smothering to…well, to suffocating.
Twice in my life I’ve gotten trapped under bodies or inflatable things in a pool and been unable to come up for air. Once I had my face held underwater to the point of nearly blacking out. That sensation is terrifying. All three situations are burned into my memory.
Put another way: I don’t choose the word “suffocating” without full and just consideration.
I tried to tell him what I was feeling. My diction was sanitized, of course—I never would have used “suffocating” to his face—but, after looking out the living room blinds and seeing his car drive by again and having his eyes meet mine, I did not mince words. I think I still remember them:
“I’m not comfortable having these conversations anymore. I’m sorry. I’m moving, and I want a fresh start. I don’t think we should communicate any more.”
I ignored the reply he sent.
I let his calls go to voicemail and then deleted them without listening.
When he appeared after school unannounced, I refused to acknowledge him. After a few minutes, mercifully, he left.
*****
This is all a very long way of saying: I will never not empathize with Pádraic. Watching him struggle to navigate the new terms of agreement felt gut-wrenching. The man was so desperate to please, but also so overbearing in a way he couldn’t recognize. I was embarrassed for him and, likewise, mortally embarrassed for myself and the times I’ve needily clung to people trying to hold onto them, but I could forgive Pádraic far more readily for his errors than I can myself. I hurt for the guy who didn’t have much and then, one day, woke up to having the best bit revoked.
But my heart also goes out to Colm. I have sat in that man’s seat, listening to a person I cared about but didn’t care to be around talk about everything and nothing. I have felt that stagnant feeling of being trapped, wanting to give kindness to a lonely fella but also realizing that the ear and company I offer are spreading a stale mold through my existence. How many years could I endure the smothering presence of a person out of the goodness of my heart? How much emotional labor is enough to prove I care to a person who is so remarkably desperate for someone to do just that, but also incapable of settling for just that and nothing more?
Worse yet, though, is the other side of the coin. What kind of ogre would revoke a friendship like that? What else was I going to do with my Friday nights? What else was I going to do with my empty life and claustrophobic little existence if not devote time to this person who craved it? This person who needed it! I was a saint if I offered it, I figured, but I was a demon if I didn’t.
Colm suffered—again, I choose my words carefully—for years the cost of his own lacking inertia. How many songs might he have composed? How many friends might he have made? How much of his life did he drink away, one pint at a time, politely listening to a well-meaning donkey tender?
The secret underneath Colm’s kindness, as well as mine, is that both of our friendships said more about how we viewed ourselves than our company. The Banshees of Inisherin states, in no uncertain terms, that Colm cares for Pádraic. There’s a scene following a quarrel that codifies it and a few lines after a drunken argument let Colm voice it, and there are others beyond those too. But Colm’s revocation isn’t ultimately about Pádraic but about Colm: this decision and the shocking distances he goes to uphold it both assert that Colm deserves to pursue things that engage him. Colm deserves to untether himself from the rope Pádraic has gently and innocently tied between them. Colm has inherent value beyond what he offers to a man in need of attention and affection, but he’ll never believe that until he stands up and proclaims that he needs something different. This assertion makes Pádraic collateral damage, but hurting his buddy is Colm’s penance for years of tolerating a life and relationship he didn’t want.
Had I watched Banshees a decade ago, I wonder how I would have received it. Would I have ached for poor Pádraic who lost the light of his life and found himself broken in the mirror? No doubt I would have been intensely critical of Colm. I’d have scoffed at his refusal to endure and chided his willingness to hurt Pádraic. If I could handle a “relationship” like that, why couldn’t he?
I know better now because I couldn’t.
*****
The Banshees of Inisherin was my number one movie of 2022 on its own merits. Director Martin McDonagh creates a fully-realized world, rich characters with relatable problems, and darkly comedic situations that put those characters and their issues to the test. Farrell, Gleeson, Condon, and Barry Keoghan each give stirring performances and the score, design, and cinematography all bring an understated but moving story to life.
But I’d be lying if I claimed my affection wasn’t, in part, for personal, meta-textual reasons. The film helped me acknowledge my own growth and forced me to grapple with a guilt that has endured far longer than my performative friendship ever did. No matter how many people validated my feelings of fear and the decision to cut off communication, I have always felt like I was in the wrong, that the brutality of my pushing this innocent person away outclassed the suffocation and escalating discomfort I felt. I saw the world only through Pádraic’s eyes, wholly unaware that I was destined to become Colm.
More than any person or any number of intervening years, Banshees has helped absolve me of a ghost.
I’m feckin’ grateful, you best believe it.
I’m starting to really hone in on a rhythm with writing. I wrote this piece and drafted one other potential newsletter essay this week, but I also devoted several hours to conceiving an idea I used in my Calculus classes on Wednesday. I won’t know the effect for a while—if ever—but I was really proud of putting together what I did, presenting it raw, and trusting my students to see the generosity and warm purpose behind what could have been a difficult discussion. In addition, I was really proud to see myself use writing to both prepare for presenting that idea (as in writing all of my thoughts and motivations out and weighing their merits) and reflecting on the experience afterward. Both pieces fell into the general format of what I write for here and, although I may return to that idea some day in this arena, for the moment, I was just excited to discover that I am coming to really think in the language of these pieces.
If I can’t run and I have no treadmill, I’m happy to be devoting that time to writing.
Also: I really enjoyed making this week’s art. I had that image in my head the whole week and I found creating it to be a rewarding experience.