The Spectator’s best films of 2022
Banshees of Inisherin: a magnificent cinematic metaphor The In Bruges writer-director Martin McDonagh has made another film starring Colin Farrell and Brendon Gleeson which, this time, is set in 1923 on the tiny Irish island of Inisherin. Colm (Gleeson) and Padraic (Farrell) are lifelong pals and drinking buddies until Colm abruptly decides that’s it, friendship over, and he’s deadly serious. If Padraic so much as approaches him he’ll cut off one of his own fingers. A cinematic metaphor for the Irish Civil War – you can occasionally hear distant guns from the mainland – where neighbour turned on neighbour, this is funny, sad, violent, despairing, always gripping, and features two magnificent, virtuoso performances.