14 years ago, a then unknown Martin McDonagh made his directorial debut with a violently naughty comedy called Hiding in Bruges. It truly was the leap into the big screen for one of Britain’s most renowned theater playwrights, and the writing charts were noted in a fresh and fun film that earned an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay. It also brought the best role to date of Colin Farrell, who coincided on screen with an imposing Brendan Gleeson. McDonagh’s Irish origins were apparent in that film, but he had not dared to exploit them as much as he has done in Banshees by Inisherin.
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A film that navigates between black comedy, drama and reflection on masculinity with the characteristic signs of the director, with those scripts full of intelligent phrases and sharp as daggers. A premise as simple as the discussion between two friends serves McDonagh to offer his most restful film, the least pending to be brilliant all the time. These two friends are Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell. The first is the friend who stops talking to the other, causing an existential crisis in the second. All located in an Ireland in 1923, in the middle of a Civil War that is heard in the background.
Con Banshees by Inisherin MacDonagh has once again convinced everyone. It has nine Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Directing (McDonagh’s first) and nominations for its cast. Until now, Farrell had never won so many awards —he has already won the Golden Globe, the same award he won for Hiding in Bruges— nor the recognition of the Hollywood Academy, but he confesses that if he has to be honest, the awards “are not important” to him. Of course, he remembers the phone call from the Venice Film Festival to tell him that he had won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor and describes it as “wonderful”.
“Anything that puts the spotlight on the movie I like, because it’s a tough movie to sell. It is not going to be released as Avatar o Black Adam in 3,500 cinemas. It doesn’t come with that weight, with that mythology and with the relationship that the audience currently has with the biggest movies. This is something very intimate. Is different. It feels different. It’s a great movie because it asks questions about the human condition and why we are the way we are and how we behave with each other, but it needs a little help. We are still coming out of the pandemic, and the public’s relationship with theaters is in question. We don’t know what’s going on yet, but these movies need a little help, so the Volpi cup was great, anything that draws attention to the movie is great and I appreciate it, but I feel like an award shared by everyone,” he says about the awards season that will culminate in an Oscar that will face Austin Butler and Brendan Fraser.
Farrell shows charm in interviews. Far is that one enfant terrible of the cinema that they feared in each filming. From Ireland, with a coffee and together with Brendan Gleeson, she attends and monopolizes the conversation. She serves as a counterpoint to Gleeson’s shyness, who says that the reunion between the two has been as if Hiding in Bruges it was filmed yesterday. “It’s like we haven’t stopped working together. And on top of that with such fresh and exciting material, so it’s been beautiful. Beautiful and so easy,” says Gleeson, and Farrell adds that as if they had just taken “a lunch break”. Only “a very long one”.
As an actor, he is clear that he has changed. And a lot. From an almost easygoing attitude to worrying about the projects in which he gets involved. “The longer you live, the deeper your experience, maybe there’s a little more wisdom, born out of that experience, and I think that shows. I, in the early stages of my work as an actor, didn’t give a shit about how I or the movies were perceived. You did the best you could and then you walked away. I guess I just didn’t know how to handle how much I really cared about what I was doing. Every time I went to work I felt kind of silly worrying so much so I convinced myself that I didn’t care at all. Now I really know how much I care, and that makes me no longer link my worth as a man through acting. Now I admit how much I care. There is no secret. I love what I do for a living. I love telling stories ”, ditch.
Two decades later, it is still surprising that he continues in this industry. “I can’t believe that I make a living and that I can support my loved ones doing what I do. I honestly can’t believe that 20 years later I can still do something that has become so important to me, and do special things with people like this, with Martin McDonagh and all this cast and crew. Now I can enjoy all this. A joy that comes with a little pain, but a pain that means something, and that’s something extraordinary. If pain or sadness means nothing, if they are only cruelly inflicted, that is another matter. I’m not talking about that, I’m talking from a very fortunate position and a kind of pain that makes this film so beautifully written and can provoke each person questions about themselves, about others and about their hopes. ditch.
Many have seen in the silence of his characters a criticism of that masculinity that is not capable of speaking about its emotions, but Brendan Gleeson is not so clear about it and believes that it is better to keep quiet than to speak nonsense: “It was one of the things that I spoke with Martin McDonagh, how important it was that these men historically never said words like ‘I don’t want to hurt your feelings’, but the idea of male silence as something negative is not so clear to me, because sometimes it is best not to say anything. My character talks a lot, and that doesn’t help.”