I’d throw in Arrival if you like slow, thoughtful sci‑fi, and I’d skip Moonfall unless you enjoy chaos for the sake of it. Happy to suggest more if you want.
Just after Christmas I watched the Banshees of Inisherin. I enjoyed it. It's a great visual treat to look at and the distinctly odd storyline makes sense when you realise the theme is feuds and feuding and the unforeseen consequences of such conflicts and how they spread beyond the immediate protagonists fracturing whole communities until everyone loses something. Unfortunately I was watching it while laid up at home with severe flu which knocked me out for two weeks. Every time I think of that film now I'm reminded of feeling really ill... I'd still recommend it to anyone who hasn't seen it though.
probably worth a merge with this thread from 2 years earlier.. https://www.ducatiforum.co.uk/threads/what-are-you-watching.66053/
I took it as a motif representing feuding's self destructive vanity. Colm wants rid of Padraic's society and his empty prattle so he can concentrate on a higher purpose: his music. Padraic's simple ways are killing Colm spiritually, so he claims. When Padraic refuses to be rebuffed Colm uses the threat of self-mutilation to shift blame to Padraic for all that will follow if he persists. By literally throwing his severed fingers at Padraic's door Colm is making a public gesture that the loss of his ambition (without his fingers he can no longer make music and is reduced to beating time with the mute body of his violin and splashing blood form his stumps while others make the music) is on Padraic's conscience. Colm's finger-throwing is an attempt to publicly place the blame on Padraic for Colm's own choice to make a martyr of himself. Thereby he draws this closed community into his private feud with Padraic. The undercurrent is catastrophic stubbornness. Cutting one's nose to spite one's face. And the futility of this ripples out in this tiny community till it infects everyone. Colm loses his fingers - and with them the music that is supposed to be his defining purpose. Padraic loses his closest friendship and his beloved pet donkey who chokes on Colm's discarded fingers, and ultimately he loses the one person he loves and depends on, his sister who can no longer endure the poisoned atmosphere and flees to the mainland. Padraic even loses his one remaining friend, the simple-minded and abused Garda's son Dominic, who deprived of the society of Padraic's sister Siobhan with whom he is besotted, drowns himself in the lough. In the end, Colm and Padraic stand at the shore before the smoking ruin of Colm's cottage, no further forward in their feud after all it's destructiveness, surveying the drifting smoke of a larger but equally pointless conflict, the Irish civil war, playing out across the water. Again, with nothing resolved and the land poisoned for generations. At least, that's my take. But I may be talking shite. Its a great film anyway and a minor tragi-comic gem.
i cant imagine there are many from the RoI that would consider it a position not worth defending. but yip, pointless. . not particularly high brow. but an a Great Movie. Apex. The Long Walk. House of Dynamite. The Life of Chuck. The Dead Don't Die. Heretic. All well made movies I've enjoyed recently.
The only section I don't like is the clay man piece, other than that, I've rewatched multiple times. Brilliant.
The point was, they'd already won the war, and then they started fighting each, needlessly, destroying what they had. That was my reading of the film's allegorical meaning. Still a good visual watch though, and sadly comic in places. Very fine acting too.
yip, agree. a pointless war. i think i will make a point of watching that movie. been meaning to for a while.
