So, back in high school, I had this friend. We’ll call him… Jay. Around when we started school, me and him were put into a special morning roll call group with a few others, all of whom were neurodivergent in one form or another. We hung around a lot during class breaks, and they were pretty much the only friends I had back then. Sure, I got along okay with the rest of my classmates, more or less, but they were more acquaintances than anything else. These guys, though? Proper mates.
Then Jay decided that that wasn’t happening anymore. One day, he just up and told me to piss off. To not hang out with him and the others during lunch like we usually did. Knowing my often-violent mood swings at the time, I’m not saying that he probably didn’t have his reasons for doing so; just that it came out all of a sudden.
And this wasn’t a one-off thing either; every so often, he would just suddenly decide that I shouldn’t be there anymore, after however many days of us kinda-sorta being cool with each other again. On a random whim, I would get cut off from the only friends I had for however long he felt like. It finally came to an end a little while before we graduated, when he made nice because, and I quote, he “found someone worse” than me. Not exactly the most welcoming apology, but I didn’t hold it against him then or now; at least the merry-go-round ended, and we were able to part on good terms.
I bring all this up because this film, the latest from Three Billboards writer/director Martin McDonagh, starts out much like that incident did. At the pub, Pádraic (Colin Farrell) goes up to talk with his best friend Colm (Brendan Gleeson)… only for Colm to ask him not to talk to him anymore. He says that Pádraic is too dull for him now, and tells him rather emphatically to leave him alone or else. There's a definite two-man play structure to it at first, with the theatrical dialogue between the two where they just keep talking to each other about why they’re no longer talking to each other. McDonagh basically weaponizes small talk to highlight how much really isn’t being said in the midst of these conversations… but at the same time, emphasising how even inconsequential chatter like this can be the most vital thing in the world.
Because much like myself way back when, Pádraic doesn’t have a lot of friends outside of Colm. He is generally well-liked around his home on the island of Inisherin, but this friendship in particular means a lot to him. As easy as it is to somewhat understand Colm’s want to just be left alone (it’s set in 1923, but that sentiment is so ‘social media age’, it’s almost unbelievable), it’s even easier to see why this sudden shift would completely throw Pádraic off his rhythm. Where Pádraic finds contentment in his simple existence, tending to his farm animals alongside his sister Siobhán (Kerry Condon), Colm aspires to something greater. He wants to be remembered after his time, so he spends more time with his fiddle playing and less time with Pádraic’s niceties. Because being nice isn’t memorable.
While there’s some degree of sense in what he’s saying, as negative things tend to stick out more in the collective memory, the initial why of their initial split doesn’t really matter. What does is that it doesn’t stop there, with Pádraic going to more desperate measures to reconnect with his friend, and Colm going to even more desperate measures to get him to stop. Like, ‘I will literally mutilate myself if you don’t leave me alone’ kind of desperate. Yeah. Things get bleak here, possibly even more so than they did in Three Billboards, and what started as a mild disagreement ends up bringing out the worst in both of them. And what comes to the forefront with that is how such a simple decision not only leads to this tier of escalation, but also threatens to bring the entire town down with it.
It reminded me a fair bit of Ben Wheatley’s Colin You Anus (or Happy New Year, Colin Burstead, to use its less-good official title), where it uses social discomfort as a microcosm for… well, warfare. By showing the one-on-one seeds of conflict that can burrow and spore in the human heart, it brings out the palpable tragedy that even conflicts on this scale can evoke, much less the bigger ones. As mentioned above, this is set in 1923, near the end of the Irish Civil War, with the sound of shelling ringing out over the valley in the background of some scenes. The film itself actively avoids pointing fingers at either side of that conflict, because this isn’t a matter of which of the two is the ‘right’ side. It’s about how maddeningly pointless and depressing it is that such conflicts happen in the first place.
Now, as astoundingly melancholic as this film gets, making for one of the most heart-crushingly tragic stories I’ve seen on the big screen in years, it’s also fucking hilarious. Much like with Three Billboards, it starts out on a predominantly humorous footing, with all the characters being openly blunt and callous in the words they say to each other. Seeing Siobhán yell about how feckin’ boring the men in this town are because they’re prone to petty bullshit like this is quite funny, but also sad, but also very funny. This atmosphere is added to by the casually lecherous Dominic, played by Barry Keoghan in yet another weirdo role, along with David Pearse as a local priest, both of whom get some real jewels to their names here. And all without undermining just how dark things get later on; if anything, the tragic and comic elements here end up making each other stronger by the juxtaposition.
This hit me like a wrecking ball. Beyond its similarity to an event from my own childhood, its ultimate statement about the futility of holding onto your own bitterness and spite does nothing but rot you from the inside-out really spoke to my pacifist leanings. I mean, I’ll admit it, I go through situations where that want to be ‘in the right’ overrides the rational sense of my actions in trying to make that happen, and it’s something that can really fuck with me on some days. As such, seeing a film that not only managed to turn that into intense emotional catharsis, but also wrapped it up in some of the best belly laughs I’ve had all year, means a lot to me as a viewer. This is seriously impressive stuff, and if you’re ever in the mood for laughing ‘til you cry and then just plain crying, I highly recommend checking this out.
No comments:
Post a Comment