The Oscar spirits of Colin Farrell, Bautista and the Apocalypse, Asterix and Obelix against Ibra: films in cinemas and streaming

Here it is, the film that should have won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival 2022 and, rest assured, it will be honored on the Night of the Oscars on March 12, with 9 nominations strong. The spirits of the island (original title, The Banshees of Inisherin) was then the most surprising, profound, enjoyable film of a prestigious competition then won by All the beauty and the bloodshed – All the beauty and the bloodshed by Laura Poitras. The first trump de The spirits of the island consists in the fact that the director Martin McDonagh, after the success of the award-winning Three Billboards in Ebbing, Missouri, chooses to change era, register, setting and performs a triple somersault, telling us that life is an elusive accidentalso on the west coast of Ireland devastated by the Civil War, ad 1923.
Inisherin Island, a lost outpost on the green cliffs inhabited by a small community of shepherds and small farmers scattered in stone houses as trendy (today) as they are spartan and uncomfortable (yesterday). The landmarks of the village are a tiny Catholic church and a pub-saloon the only meeting place of the place, every evening enlivened by the violin of Colm Doherty (Brendan Gleason), the inseparable friend of Padraic Suilleabhain (Colin Farrell).
Padraic the brother of housewife – warrior – suffragette Siobhan (Kerry Condon). A good and kind man, a bit boring, in awe of women, and for this reason never married, with a soft spot for a donkey who lives in his house. Around Padraic and Siobhan, a colorful court of miracles moves: 1) the disturbed Dominic Kearney (Barry Keoghan), a poor soul subjected to harassment by his bad cop father, 2) the innkeeper who sells pints of beer and the involuntary judge of brawls, hangovers and bad habits, 3) the gossipy shopkeeper who best serves those who bring her news with whom to gossip and 4) that witch of Miss McCormick who predicts misfortune wandering in the meadows dressed in black like the mourners.
The patatatrac comes like a bolt of lightning when Colm decides to cut ties with Padraic: he no longer wants to speak to him because he has to compose music and can’t waste time. Nothing personal, but the two can no longer be friends, says Colm: everyone goes their own way. Padraic falls from the clouds and does not rest. What did you do to him, Padraic? Did you fight?. Maybe he doesn’t like you anymore. The thorny issue becomes an obsession, so much so that Colm gets furious and promises: Every time you talk to me, I’ll cut off my finger. Even little Inisherin warns that the world is changing and there are those who adapt and those who don’t.
Colm is the victim of a virile depression that pushes him to settle accounts with others. Padraic a quiet man who sees all his certainties collapse: even his sister, the real male of the house, decides to leave the island where relations have become unhealthy. The spirits of the island therefore a praise of friendship as well as a metaphor for civil war (which often has no real why) and the sinking of the twentieth century. The drama is tempered in humor / black humor while, especially in the first part, Colm’s Irish desperation is effectively highlighted. The noise of the cannons crosses the sea and the consciences creating a nervous, surreal, painful atmosphere.
Colm stays all day in his little house by the sea thinking and rethinking about death, destiny, the time he has left to live and how to fill the days with quality actions, music in the first place. McDonagh light and deep, primordial and forward-looking. Farrell and Gleeson re-team with him afterwards In Bruges – The Conscience of the Murderer (2008) and they are magnificent in that existential bickering which at first seems like a scuffle between two grumpy nuts and then becomes dramatic, mystical-esoteric, definitive, even horror. All built on the five senses and the noise of black thoughts, with two stone guests: the Irish Sea and a shadow that seems to have come out of Seventh seal by Ingmar Bergman, the black lady that everyone takes away.

THE SPIRITS OF THE ISLAND by Martin McDonagh
(Ireland-Great Britain-USA, 2022, duration 114′)
Starring Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon, Barry Keoghan, Pat Shortl, Gary Lydon, Sheila Flitton
Rating: **** out of 5
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