#standards that inishmore's lead just doesn't have

[musical-chick-13]

No, but the way this movie contrasts with The Lieutenant of Inishmore, DOWN TO HAVING THE SAME NAME OF THE PROTAGONISTS, ONLY DISTINGUISHED BY AN ACCENT ON ONE OF THE “A”s.

But Inishmore’s lead is established as volatile and dangerous from the beginning, whereas Banshees’ lead works his way up there. Both of these works involve a violent conflict over the death of an animal, but Inishmore ends with the animal in question having been alive the whole time, the perceived death kicking off the story, but Banshees’ animal death leads to the film’s climax.

Inishmore‘s violence over a beloved pet comes as a result of the protagonist jumping immediately to murder as an egregious overreaction, allowing it to remain a comedy through exaggeration, whereas the (attempted) murder in Banshees comes as a result of increasing desperation, at the end of a long, hard journey where not much is funny anymore. Inishmore’s cat is the only thing Padraic cares about at all, whereas Banshees’ donkey Jenny is the very last friend Pádraic had left. In Inishmore, the pet was an inciting incident, used as an excuse for the lead to go on a spree, but in Banshees, it’s the last straw in a list of things the lead believes this feud with his former friend has taken from him: the friend in question breaking off the friendship on account of his “inherent dullness” in the first place, the feud’s escalation being the thing that finally pushes his sister to leave the island, and Pádraic’s feud-inspired petty actions regarding a potential friendship rival pushing Dominic away as well. He has been slowly driven into deeper and deeper feelings of isolation (some of them his own fault, some of them not), and Jenny’s death is the last push into those feelings that sends him into the pit completely.

Padraic of Inishmore is willing to kill other animals, but Pádraic of Banshees is unwilling to harm Colm’s dog, since the dog did nothing wrong and never hurt him. Padraic (Inishmore) is incapable of forming true connections with other people, but Pádraic’s (Banshees) tragedy is tied up in his inability to deal with the loss of those genuine connections that he does make.

MANY THOUGHTS. HEAD FULL.