The Banshees of Inisherin

How do you define loneliness? How do you depict exactly that state that you feel at the end of an awful week, when everything went wrong, when you were just struggling to breathe and cope with your own shit, and people – strangers, co-workers, best friends – hit exactly where it hurts the most?

The Banshees of Inisherin is about all these feelings and more. “History is the nightmare from which I am trying to awake” (Joyce), be it personal or social, and War has been created by the human being. But war, in this film, is like a faint echo, far away from all the noise and loneliness of characters, and at the same time present everywhere. Because the simple people don’t care about the war, it’s not theirs, because like most of the fights, war/the conflicts between/among people are absurd, like some whispers of the banshees.

We get loneliness, fury, and pain through this absurd conflict and blindless. And when we feel that, we all want to hit back, don’t we? When we are left all by ourselves, when we feel unloved -when all we have wanted was to feel safe and beloved – how can one remain kind, good, present there? How can one not strike back? Because at the end, evil seems to conquer and defeat all of us – some sinking, some taking their lives, some regretting their acts when it’s too late. Do we have any kind of agency in front of the evilness of this world? 

I guess that’s one of the most challenging parts of our lives, almost impossible. To understand the one that harms you, to remain true-to-yourself even when you are wounded and you feel that you are alone in the world.