SOLSC March 11: A Movie

             The Oscars are tomorrow night. I love the movies, but Covid has kept me from going to theaters, and I find it hard to spend time watching films on my laptop. I’ve only seen one of the Best Picture nominees so far, Women Talking (which I loved).

            However, I’ve heard that some streaming services are showing all the Best Picture nominees for free before the award ceremony, so tonight I watched The Banshees of Inisherin.

            It’s hard to think of a more melancholy movie. An isolated island in 1923, during Ireland’s civil war after independence, which we know of only from occasional sounds of gunfire across the water. The core of the movie is the end of a friendship between Colm (an older man who plays the fiddle) and Padraic (a younger man who doesn’t think about much other than his animals and drinking at the pub every afternoon with Colm.

            Colm is concerned about the fact that we all die, and getting old means he will die sooner rather than later. (Having just turned 80 myself, I can sympathize with his angst.) He no longer wants any of his time to be wasted, and spending time with Padraic talking about nothing in particular now strikes him as “wasting time.” He wants no more of it. Padraic doesn’t understand any of this — he’s still young — so insists that Colm isn’t being “nice.”

            Men are notorious for not talking about their feelings now in the early 21st century, and it was certainly no different 100 years ago in Ireland. The little touches of small-town life — a policeman father who beats his son, the shopkeeper/postmistress who reads people’s mail so she’ll have gossip to make her life interesting — only make the scene more bleak. But the landscape is gorgeous and the story moves well.

            The tensions between these two men becomes gothic, then horrifying. And I won’t say more as there would be spoilers. But I have to find someone who has seen this film to talk about it and the ending.

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I’m participating in the 16th annual Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. This is day 11 of the 31-day challenge.  It’s not too late to make space for daily writing in a community that is encouraging, enthusiastic, and eager to read what you have to slice about.  Join in!