The Banshees of Inisherin and Triangle of Sadness -Two Bad Movies, One Long Review

While I initially thought both of these reviews would need their own post I have decided to include them in one since they were both films I chose not to finish for similar reasons though I believe the second film I will discuss was worse. I will begin by discussing the film I enjoyed more and move on to the one totally lacking any value in my opinion.

The Banshees of Inisherin:

The Banshees of Inisherin is the latest film from director Martin McDonagh who is someone whose films I neither love nor hate having seen only two of them those being Seven Psychopaths, which I really enjoyed, and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri which I was enjoying until the third act where the movie kind of fell apart in my opinion. Banshees of Inisherin also falls apart late in the film’s runtime so much so that I did not watch the last 25 minutes of the movie since I did not wish to subject myself to any more of it even though I had enjoyed much of it up to that point and I will explain that decision in this review. I will begin by discussing my thoughts on the film and later explain why I chose not to finish this movie.

The movie tells the story of the falling out between two friends on an isolated Island in Ireland. The first of the two friends is named Padraic Suilleabhain and he is a reserved farmer who enjoys spending his days at the pub discussing his life with anyone that will listen and he is played by Colin Farrell. The other friend is named Colm Doherty and he has come to a crossroads in his life having decided to spend his remaining time focusing on his musical ambitions as opposed to listening to any more of Colm’s dull life and he is played by Brendan Gleeson. Gleeson is very good here but Farrell is amazing again showing that these black comedy roles are perfect for him as he is able to play them straight faced as he did in the great film The Lobster.

The movie has lots of great comedic moments from Gleeson confronting Farrell who is shocked to be told that he is dull to a later moment where Gleeson has a shouting match full of profanity with a priest, who looks a lot like Phil Collins, in a church confessional. Another aspect of the film that is great is the musical score which perfectly fit the setting of the film and bizarre nature of the story while still feeling upbeat. The movie has a lot of great conversations too which at times had lots of depth to them especially in the one where Colin Farrell defends the importance of being nice to your friends and family as opposed to the pursuit of ensuring one’s legacy which Gleeson views as being more important even though he cannot remember which century one of the composers he is inspired by lived in pointing to the absurdity of his argument. The movie also has a lot of great subtleties to it especially in one scene where Gleeson follows through on cutting off one of his fingers, since Farrell would not leave him alone, and he first insists to his sister that he feels no pain and is later shown to wince when he tries to lift his arm after his sister leaves his house. Most the great moments in this film come from the performances of Gleeson and Farrell which may have led to Kerry Condon, who plays Farrell’s wife and Gleeson’s sister, performance being overshadowed such that in many of her scenes it feels as though the movie is spinning its wheels and the audience is just waiting to get back to the feud between the two friends. The movie also has several memorable and funny lines including “it was all going well until he chopped all of his fingers off” and “I am not putting my donkey outside when I’m sad.” That last line leads into why I chose not to finish this movie.

In this film Collin Farrell has a pet donkey who becomes his closest friend after his falling out with Gleeson as noted in the above line I quoted where he begins bringing the pet inside more and more as his human relationships deteriorate. The donkey is also very cute and provides a lot of levity in the film such as him sniffing throughout the kitchen and eating food right off of the table. That being said I was worried while watching the movie that the donkey was going to die, and it did in some awful attempt at humour where the donkey chokes to death after Gleeson tossed several of his severed fingers into Farrell’s yard which the donkey tried to eat. As the movie progressed it became less of a comedy and more of a depressing venture to watch and once the donkey, who by that point had become my favourite aspect of the film, died I had no interest in finishing the movie. I am sick of movies constantly killing animals to the point at which whenever they are involved in movies I try to avoid them since I gain no enjoyment at seeing them killed on screen. Based on the film becoming so bleak and again relying on the death of animal for either a sick joke or poor attempt to make the audience feel sad I did not wish to give the film any more of my time. For these reasons I gave this film a 1/10 as while there were things I did enjoy about the movie they were all undone by killing the donkey.

Triangle of Sadness:

The second film I will be discussing is Triangle of Sadness which was directed by Ruben Ostlund which become an Oscar favourite early in 2022 after it won the prestigious Palm d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Knowing that the film was so acclaimed and having enjoyed last years Palm d’Or winner Titane I went into this film with high expectations. I am shocked to say that the movie offers nothing to the viewer aside from boring them with tired cliches which are only ever momentarily interrupted with slight moments of humour which are played over and over to the point at which they too lose all value. This movie, similar to the first I mentioned here, tested my patience and though I almost finished the movie I decided not to when late in the third act of the film another donkey dies in what can only be described as a sadistic attempt at humour which I cannot see anyone with a conscience enjoying. I will share my thoughts below on this film though it is hard to try and separate out specific moments to talk about from this movie since it was all so bland and has become a muddled haze in my mind to try and sift through.

This movie cannot really be given a synopsis since there appears to not be a plot aside from relying on the ever increasing interest in poking fun at rich and famous characters and have them be faced with absurd circumstances. The movie does not shy away from relying on those that have come before it including in its opening sequence which seems to have been copy and pasted from the much superior film The Neon Demon directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. In both sequences a model is covered in paint and in both films we see the harsh world of high fashion though here it is seen only from the surface and treated as a kind of joke as opposed to a central theme the movie investigates in detail as was done in The Neon Demon. Directly following this sequence the main couple of Carl and Yaya, played by Harris Dickinson and Charlbi Dean (R.I.P.), bicker over who should pay the bill in the restaurant and how their decision is impacted by gender roles. It was hard to not laugh watching this because my mind kept imagining George having this exact same conversation 30 years ago in Seinfeld where the subject was given greater inspection and more humour resulted because of it. As I knew the movie had received so much praise and won such a high honour at the Cannes Film Festival it was a shock to see these two sequences back to back which appeared so unoriginal and uninspired. I think this movie being billed as an absurd satirical black comedy may have been the reason so much of it was disappointing because it takes so long for the movie to even scratch the surface of being the film it is labelled as being by which time I wonder if many viewers will have checked out as I feel I had. The film seems to go out of its way to be mundane and bore the audience never giving them anything to think about or enjoy which I question the intent behind, perhaps this movie is an Andy Kaufman esque gag where the joke is the movie itself.

Here is a comparison of the shots I mentioned from a Triangle of Sadness, pictured first, and The Neon Demon, pictured second.

As I mentioned at the start of this review there are a few moments which were somewhat funny such as the sequence where a briefcase is lowered from a helicopter into the ocean and then retrieved by a small boat and brought onboard the yacht only to have it be revealed that it was carrying several jars of Nutella. Another moment which I thought was somewhat clever was when a rich man’s daughter leans over to ask him to buy her something on her phone which he only halfheartedly agrees to which she responds to by saying that she loves him which he reciprocates in a manner indicating that this is commonplace and there relationship is purely transactional. The moment in the film which I think will draw the most laughs though is the dinner sequence on the boat where characters are first shown to have to contort their bodies to stay upright while the boat lists to one side. The best moments in the movie occur here including one moment where a pompous and reserved elderly couple are revealed to be arms dealers and the captain of the luxury ship requests a burger and fries while many of the patrons on board are served gourmet meals. This scene transitions from fine dining on the high seas to a full on barphorama reminiscent of the famous scene in Stand By Me where several characters end up puking in increasingly ridiculous fashion from one woman who tries to puke in a toilet while being tossed around as the ship rocks back and forth to another man who continues enjoying his meal even after he is puked on by someone else in the dining room. While this could have been a funny moment the movie insists on having it go on and on to the point that it starts getting repetitive and ultimately annoying as the movie appears to be spinning its wheels and incapable of coming up with anything interesting for the characters to do besides be thrown around and vomit on each other as if this were the latest instalment in the Jackass franchise.

The absurd dinner scene reminded me of this better sequence from The Phantom of Liberty which I remember a professor showed to a class I was in to have us observe how the whole scene poked fun at what we see as taboo.

In the third act the characters end up marooned on an island after some pirates attack their yacht which begins with the arms dealers being blown up by a grenade lobbed at them which they identify as their own before being blown up in a pathetic attempt at humour. The way the movie continuously tries to treat this chaotic moments as mundane, reminiscent of the style of Wes Anderson, never really works here as the movie never treats anything seriously such that in trying to tell all these jokes the movie ends up becoming one. Furthermore, the movie has a very pretentious musical score that never reflects any of the emotion or actions going on in the movie such that they too undermined the credibility of the film as the soundtrack seemed independent of the film. While the movie tries to force in some discussions about influencer culture and the disparities between the affluent and the less well off these are only ever mentioned rather than fully investigated beyond the surface of what they appear to be. No topic is given a greater disservice though than the way in which the movie shoehorns in a couple of scenes reflective of the issues brought up by the #MeToo movement and treats it as a joke wherein Carl is somewhat forced into a physical relationship as a means of gaining favour with a woman who has become the sole provider of food and shelter on the island they are marooned on. The movie is both unfunny, not entertaining, and has no depth which make me question who this was made for and how anyone could have come away from this movie and enjoyed it.

As I mentioned above the movie finally made me quit when a character tries to kill a donkey on the island for food which is not something I am against including in a film where characters must kill animals in order to survive. However, instead of simply killing the animal the movie again plays it off as a joke as the man fails to kill the animal after hitting it with a rock whrein several characters who are observing from a distance alert him to the fact that the animal is still alive and struggling. The man then picks up the rock and continues hitting the animal over and over while the audience must listen to the increasingly fragmented screams of a dying animal as if this was something that could be funny based on the character's seeming ineptitude to survive in the wild due to his sheltered existence. I did not find it funny nor did I think it had any artistic value as I recognize it as only a depraved sequence in an unoriginal film not worth watching and most certainly not deserving of praise. Thus, I gave the film a 1/10 and quit at that precise moment so as to not give the makers of this movie any more of my time since they do not deserve it and I hope no one else gives it to them.

While much of these two reviews have been negative I would like to end on a positive note by recommending last years winner of the Palme d’Or that being Titane. Titane is similar to Triangle of Sadness in one aspect only and that is that it is almost impossible to think of a proper synopsis for this film though here it is because the movie is populated with several nuanced and unique ideas, great performances, and engaging imagery. Agathe Rousselle gave an incredible performance in Titane which I thought should have been talked about more during the awards seasons since she was so incredible here and must undergo such a huge transformation in this movie which she did flawlessly. Titane is a Kafka esque body horror film much in the vein of the catalogue of films made by director David Cronenberg. I highly recommend Titane though I must warn that the movie is extraordinarily graphic but only in service to telling a very creative story that I am sure you will not have seen anything like before. Titane is worth seeing simply to support a unique vision brought to life by the very talented director that being Julia Ducournau.

Here is the trailer for Titane: