The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Martin McDonagh · a film in English · 2022 · about 114 minutes · written and directed by Martin McDonagh
Mode
Tragicomic fable; black comedy of a small island turning by steps into tragedy
Mythos
The banshee who foretells a death, made a woman of the island; two men who were as brothers, after Cain; the innocent beast who dies of men’s violence; the island as the world in little
Phase
Some weeks in 1923, in the last months of the Irish Civil War, from a refusal at a cottage window to a meeting on the strand after a fire
Presentation
Feature film, about 114 minutes, in English with Irish idiom throughout; one linear action without flashback; Ben Davis’s photography, Mikkel E. G. Nielsen’s editing, Carter Burwell’s music
Register
Pub talk timed nearly as comedy, played against stone walls, weather and the sea, darkening to mutilation, a drowning and a burning house without a change of voice
Scale
Two men, a sister, a young man and his father, a priest, a shop and a pub, and a war seen only as smoke
Governing Proposition
On a small island off the west of Ireland in 1923, with the Civil War burning across the water, one man tells his oldest friend that he will no longer walk with him to the pub, and promises a finger for every visit after. The wager of the film is that a refusal made for a reason, once it meets another man’s need, becomes a feud neither can end, that the feud has its own logic as a war has, and that a fable whose every sentence is kept to the letter can carry an audience from laughter into complicity, and keep the laughter and the horror under one law.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
Every day at two o’clock Pádraic Súilleabháin calls at the cottage of Colm Doherty, and the two men walk to the pub. One day Colm does not come out. Pádraic knocks at the window, and Colm sits inside and does not answer: a man sitting still while his friend waits outside, and in that one frame the whole film. The island is Inisherin, off the west coast of Ireland, in 1923, in the last months of the Civil War. Across the water there is gunfire and smoke; on the island there is a shop, a pub, a church visited by a priest from the mainland, and two men who were as brothers.
Colm’s explanations come by degrees. He no longer wants Pádraic’s company. He has music he wants to write, and he means to leave something of worth before he dies; the talk at the bar, which was the substance of their friendship, is to him a waste of the years he has left. Pádraic, the nice man of the island, kind to his animals, cannot understand it; his sister Siobhán, who shares his cottage, tries to make him. Colm is right that the chatter is a waste, and the film will show how wrong he is in what he does to escape it.
Martin McDonagh wrote and directed the film. Ben Davis photographed it, Mikkel E. G. Nielsen edited it and Carter Burwell wrote the music. Colin Farrell plays Pádraic, Brendan Gleeson plays Colm, Kerry Condon plays Siobhán and Barry Keoghan plays Dominic Kearney. It runs about 114 minutes, in English with Irish idiom throughout, and it is scored in its one released version. It opened at the Venice Film Festival in September 2022, where Farrell won the prize for best actor and McDonagh the prize for screenplay, and it was released in cinemas the next month.
Movement II
Pádraic will not let it rest, and Colm sets a rule. If Pádraic goes on troubling him, he will take the shears to his own hand and cut off a finger, each time. The rule is stated plainly, and the film is built on the knowledge that on this island a sentence once said will be kept. Pádraic troubles him, and the first finger is thrown against Pádraic’s door. The sound of it turns the film from comedy to horror at a stroke, and the comedy does not stop: it goes on, under the same law, at a higher pressure.
A young musician has come over from the mainland to learn from Colm. Pádraic tells him a lie about his father, false news that sends him home. It is the first thing the feud teaches the nice man, and it is the first step of his course: the lie, then contempt for Dominic, the policeman’s son, then fire. The feud has a logic of its own, independent of either man’s wishes, as a war has, and Pádraic’s descent is told in steps, each caused by the one before.
The film stands in a long tradition: the western Irish island as a stage for black comedy and violence, from Synge’s Aran and The Playboy of the Western World to McDonagh’s own island plays, The Cripple of Inishmaan and The Lieutenant of Inishmore. It reunites the two leads of his In Bruges. What it does newly is slow the mode down and strip it of plot: no crime, no gun, no outsider’s intrigue, only the end of a liking, at feature length. The risk is the audience’s patience. The cast, the register and the setting were the maker’s own, and he had mastered them.
Movement III
The rule is carried out to the letter. The four further fingers follow, and Jenny, Pádraic’s small donkey, chokes on one of them and dies. She is found dead in the cottage, and Pádraic’s grief over her is played straight, without irony. Until then the audience has laughed along with the escalation, and the laughter has made it complicit; the donkey’s death stops the laughter in the same frame. Jenny is the innocent beast who dies of the men’s violence, the victim the feud requires, and the one death from which everything after follows.
Siobhán leaves. She takes a post at a library on the mainland, and she is the one person who leaves the island, and for good. Her letter back from the mainland states the alternative to the island’s logic. Pádraic stays. The island is formal as well as real in the film: a closed place under a stated rule, from which no one leaves except the one who leaves.
That form is the film’s instrument. Make it a realist drama of two neighbours with their psychology explained, and the knowledge that the feud has its own logic goes with it. Much of what the film knows lives in its dialogue, rhythmic, repetitive by design and exactly paced, and in its performances, Farrell’s bewilderment turning hard and Gleeson’s stillness; and much of it could live on the stage, where McDonagh’s earlier islands lived. The image adds the landscape and the weather, and the camera and the cutting serve the scene rather than discover what a page could not.
Movement IV
Colm composes a fiddle tune and names it “The Banshees of Inisherin”. The banshee is the woman of Irish lore whose cry foretells a death, and the island has one: Mrs McCormick, an old woman who walks the island, foretells death, and is seen again and again at a distance in the landscape. The title makes her figure and Colm’s tune one sign. Her foretelling is fulfilled in the action, and the myth is built into the film rather than laid over it.
Dominic Kearney is the son of Peadar, the island’s policeman, who abuses him. Keoghan plays him comic at first and then pitiable, and Pádraic, who was kind to him, turns him away. Peadar’s brutality, to his son and to Pádraic, is played in a cruder key than anything else in the film. The priest comes over from the mainland and hears Colm’s confession, and asks him about despair. The church, the law and the family are each touched by the one feud.
Dominic is found drowned in the lake, and Mrs McCormick stands over the place with her stick. It is the film’s one death of a person, and the price the feud does not count. Ben Davis’s island holds the scene as it holds the rest, in stone walls, green turned grey by weather and the sea always present, and Burwell’s score keeps its fable’s lightness against what it accompanies rather than beneath it.
Movement V
Pádraic tells Colm that he will burn his house, and names the hour: two o’clock, the hour the two men used to walk to the pub. At two o’clock he does it. The house burns on its headland with Colm sitting inside, and the dog is let out. The reprisal is the mirror of the lost habit. Each link of the chain has been caused by the one before it: the refusal, the fingers, the donkey, the fire, and the gentle man who began the film has become the man who sets it.
Afterwards the two men meet on the strand. The war across the water may be ending. This one, Pádraic insists, will not. The coda changes the sense of everything before it: the man who wanted the friendship back refuses to let the feud go, and the film ends with the quarrel kept as faithfully as the friendship once was. Who was right does not settle, and the film does not judge between the claim of art and the claim of kindness.
It received nine Academy Award nominations and won none. Four years on it survives whole, in one version, in continuous circulation, and its surface, a period island with no reference to its own day, has not dated. It did not change what other films do; it is a classical film, made with full command in its maker’s own register, and its reach is wide rather than redirecting. What it made is a fable of the end of liking, in which the pub talk of the opening and the fire at the close keep one law: on Inisherin, what is said is done.
Act III · The Twelve
The subtractive test goes well for most of the film. The breach, the fingers, the donkey’s death and the burning house are a chain, each link caused by the one before, and the hour named for the fire, the hour the men used to walk to the pub, makes the reprisal the mirror of the lost habit. Siobhán’s departure is required: her letter from the mainland states the alternative to the island’s logic. Dominic’s drowning is the price the feud does not count. The test bites on the mechanism: the fingers arrive on a schedule announced and then fulfilled, at moments a device set running rather than a necessity uncovered. A tight film whose design shows.
Score: 7.9 / 10
What the film brings into the open can be stated, and it holds: a refusal made for a reason, here Colm’s wish to leave something of worth before he dies, becomes, once it meets another man’s need, a quarrel neither can end, and the quarrel turns the gentler man cruel. Pádraic’s course is the disclosure: the nice man of the island learns from the feud first a lie, then contempt for Dominic, then fire. It shows, unstated, that the claims of art and of kindness do not reconcile. Held below the gate because the civil war is a parallel drawn rather than discovered: the film knows loneliness more truly than war.
Score: 8.0 / 10
The film rises often but in a low register, and its heights are dreadful rather than grand: the severed finger thrown against Pádraic’s door; the donkey’s death and his grief over her, played without irony; the house burning on its headland with Colm inside; Mrs McCormick with her stick over the body in the lake. Ben Davis’s island of stone walls and weather gives the action a weight past its size, and Carter Burwell’s score a fable’s lightness that sets the violence off. What holds the axis is the comic surface, which by design lowers each height as it is reached, returning the film to talk between its peaks.
Score: 7.7 / 10
Here the film builds, up to a point. The banshee, the woman of Irish lore whose cry foretells a death, is made a person of the island, Mrs McCormick, and her foretelling is fulfilled in the action; the title makes her figure and Colm’s fiddle tune one sign. The quarrel of two men who were as brothers carries the pattern of Cain and the shape of the civil war set beside it, and Jenny, the innocent beast who dies of the men’s violence, is the victim the feud requires. Held below the gate because the civil war is said across the water by gunfire and bears no weight: myth built in part, evoked in part.
Score: 7.9 / 10
The tradition is long, and its maker had worked it for a quarter of a century: the western Irish island as a stage for black comedy and violence, from Synge’s Aran and The Playboy of the Western World to McDonagh’s own The Cripple of Inishmaan and The Lieutenant of Inishmore. What the film does newly is slow that mode, strip it of plot, with no crime, no gun and no outsider’s intrigue, and rest a feature on the end of a friendship: a comedy with nothing at stake but liking. What holds the axis at the foot of the twelve, with Pressure on Tradition, is that the wager was placed on the maker’s proven path, with a cast, register and setting he had mastered.
Score: 7.2 / 10
The form is the fable: a simple action under a stated rule, that each visit will cost a finger, carried out to the letter in a closed place. Make it a realist drama of two neighbours with their psychology explained, and the film loses what it knows, that the feud has its own logic, independent of the men’s wishes, as a war has. The tragicomic register is part of the form: the laughter makes the audience complicit in the escalation until the donkey dies, and then stops in the same frame. Held below the top because much of the film’s knowledge could survive on the stage, where its dialogue would carry most of the weight.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Four years is too short for demonstration, so the axis is forecast, on what the film itself shows of further yield, and it shows a good deal. Who is right, Colm or Pádraic, does not settle on a second viewing. Colm’s motives, art, despair and the priest’s question of despair, open further. Siobhán’s choice reads differently once Dominic’s end is known, and the coda on the strand, where Pádraic refuses to let the feud end, changes the sense of everything before it. What holds the figure is that the depth is moral and tonal rather than formal: the construction, once seen, is plain.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Released in 2022, so force and reach are scored together. The intrinsic force is the demonstration that a mainstream comedy can be built on almost nothing but the end of liking, with a death and a burning at its close, and that the Irish island fable can be carried into the cinema of the 2020s with full popular reach. It does not reorganise what film can do: its means are classical and its register is its maker’s own. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: in four years, wide circulation, two prizes at Venice and nine Academy Award nominations, and no demonstrated redirection of other films, which is not forecast. That holds the axis at the foot of the twelve, with The Swerve.
Score: 7.2 / 10
Survival is weighed on form, presence and fabric. The film survives whole: one released version, made and distributed digitally, in continuous circulation on streaming services and in home release, with no loss or alteration to charge. Its presence is wide for its age, but prizes and box office are presence, not proof, and earn nothing above the step at which a span under five years stands. The surface is not fixed to a topical moment: the period setting, the absence of any contemporary reference and the fable form protect it, and no production era is charged. What holds the axis is elapsed time alone, and four years demonstrate little.
Score: 7.4 / 10
Command of the medium is high and even. The dialogue is the most finished element, rhythmic, repetitive by design and exactly paced, and the performances are fully controlled: Colin Farrell’s bewilderment turning hard, Brendan Gleeson’s stillness, Kerry Condon’s exasperated clarity, Barry Keoghan’s Dominic, comic and then pitiable. Ben Davis frames the island wide and weathered, the interiors as small boxes of warmth against the dark; Mikkel E. G. Nielsen’s editing keeps the comic timing without hurrying the silences. Held in the low eights because the making is load-bearing in dialogue and tone, while camera and cutting serve the scene rather than discover what a page could not.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the pub talk of the opening, nearly a sitcom in its timing, and the self-mutilation, the drowned boy and the burning house of the close. They obey one law. The film establishes from its first scene that a sentence said on this island will be kept, and its comedy and its horror are the same literalism at different pressures. The range is wide and held. The seam is small and lies in two places: Peadar the policeman, whose brutality to his son and to Pádraic is played in a cruder key than the rest, and the civil war, which keeps to its own register on the far shore.
Score: 8.2 / 10
The film holds more than a story of two men suggests: friendship and its end; the family, in a brother and sister who share a cottage and in a son and the father who abuses him; the church, in the visiting priest and the confession; the law, in the policeman, the shop, the pub and the post; art and mortality, in Colm’s composing; the animals; and the nation at war across the water. These are integrated, not listed, through the one feud that touches each. The ceiling is the form’s: an island of a few dozen people, a few weeks, and a war seen only as smoke. History and the state stand as a parallel, not held in its structure.
Score: 7.3 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
7.7 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier III · Major
Strongest Dimensions
The Made at 8.2 and The Inner Law at 8.2, then The Unconcealment at 8.0. Dialogue rhythmic and exactly paced, performances fully controlled and an island composed in weathered frames; one law, that a sentence said on the island will be kept, holding the pub talk of the opening and the fire of the close; and a disclosure that holds, that a refusal made for a reason becomes a feud that turns the gentler man cruel.
Limiting Dimension
The Swerve and Pressure on Tradition at 7.2: a real turn in degree, a feature built on nothing but the end of a friendship, placed on the maker’s own proven path, and a classical film of wide reach that has redirected no other. Next above them, The Encompassed at 7.3, many orders held through one feud on an island of a few dozen people with the war seen only as smoke, and The Imperishable at 7.4, a film whole and undated that four years can only begin to show surviving.
The Necessity Cap clears at 7.9 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 7.8, The Made at 8.2, The Inner Law at 8.2, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on all five: The Unconcealment at 8.0, The Archetypal Deep at 7.9, The Imperishable at 7.4, The Swerve at 7.2 and Pressure on Tradition at 7.2 each fall short of the bar of 8.5. The Universal Minimum is unmet at The Swerve, 7.2, Pressure on Tradition, 7.2, and The Imperishable, 7.4, all below 7.5; The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.3. Three of the five summit conditions are met. The work stands where its aggregate places it: 7.7, from a sum of 92.4, in the band of Tier III, short of the 8.0 at which Tier IV begins, held there chiefly by a swerve and a reach that stay within its maker’s path, and short of the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of The Banshees of Inisherin as released in 2022, about 114 minutes, in its one released version, from the knock at Colm’s window to the meeting on the strand: written and directed by Martin McDonagh, photographed by Ben Davis, edited by Mikkel E. G. Nielsen, with music by Carter Burwell; with Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon and Barry Keoghan. No print, script or subtitle file was consulted. The film is in English with Irish idiom, and every axis is judged on it as heard. No line of dialogue is held to the word, so none is quoted and speech is described; the title of Colm’s tune is the film’s own. McDonagh’s plays and his earlier film are named as the tradition the film inherits and are not judged here. The running time is approximate. Facts that could not be verified, among them the production companies, the places where the film was shot, the number of its British Academy awards, the number of deaths Mrs McCormick foretells, the count of its scenes, and the range and prominence of its early critical reception, are not given.