Flee to Distant Shores: The Banshees of Inisherin & Decision to Leave

If you’re looking to escape from America for a bit as we try to ascertain the state of our democracy, I’ve got two intriguing movies for you. Pack your suitcase, we’re going to Ireland and South Korea!

The Banshees of Inisherin: I have watched two movies written and directed by Martin McDonagh and seen two of his plays. If you are similarly familiar with his work, you will not be surprised by the tone of this particular movie. As always, we begin with a black comedy with some intriguing, very Irish folk on the fictional island of Inisherin, and the dialogue is biting and hilarious and intriguing. And then everything just escalates and gets wildly preposterous and really puts the “black” in black comedy.

I don’t want to give too much away as you need to experience the whiplash for yourself. The film reunites the dream team of Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell (they previously starred in McDonagh’s brilliant 2008 directorial debut, In Bruges). Here they play Colm and Padraic, two best friends who would reliably rock up to the pub for a pint every afternoon. But this movie opens with a dramatic twist - Colm simply doesn’t want to talk to Padraic anymore.

This evokes a whole range of emotions from Padraic. First he thinks it must be a joke, then he gets increasingly perplexed, then he gets depressed, then he gets very angry. Colm declares that Padraic is exceedingly dull and he needs to focus on writing music rather than chatting with this boring man, which is a rather brutal way to dismiss a long-standing friendship. Meanwhile Padraic lives with his sister Siobhan (Kerry Condon) and she offers up a great contrast as the seemingly only sensible person on this island while these two men bicker. The entire island community is a close-knit bunch of weirdos who are trying to avoid all the troubles raging on the mainland (the movie is set in 1923 during the Irish Civil War) but instead, this disagreement between Colm and Padraic escalates into its own troubling saga.

This is an extremely funny, extremely dark, twisty movie about how spectacularly insane men can be. It examines the bonds of friendship and family, the ache of loneliness, and is all set in the most beautiful landscape you can imagine. The setting is idyllic, even while the people turn into absolute lunatics, so strap in for a very unexpected journey.

Decision to Leave: We don't get to see many film noirs anymore. But director Park Chan-Wook (who co-wrote the screenplay with Jeong Seo-kyeong) has got you covered. In this movie, we get a stylish, ethereal mystery, wreathed in fog and lust, and while the plot is at times so twisty that it can make your head hurt, you cannot tear your eyes away from the screen.

Park Hae-il stars as Hae-jun, a detective in Busan who specializes in solving murder cases. When he is called to investigate the death of a man who fell from the top of a mountain, he finds himself intrigued by the man’s wife, Seo-Rae (Tang Wei), a Chinese immigrant who fled to South Korea in a shipping container and then married her abusive and now-dead husband. Her Korean isn’t great, so there’s some great use of translating apps and banter about vocabulary and her strange use of overly formal words. I’m sure this back-and-forth is even more rich if you speak Chinese or Korean, but it still makes for riveting viewing as you’re reading the subtitles and feeling the sexual tension ratchet up between these two characters.

Hae-jun is married but his wife lives in Ipo, so there’s a lot to contend with as he travels to see her on weekends and then returns to Busan during the week to continue his weird obsession with this case and the dead man’s wife. I won’t give away more plot, but suffice to say, there are plenty of twists and turns and fake outs that keep the suspense dialed up to an unbearably high level. Park Chan-Wook won Best Director at Cannes this year and I can certainly see why. This movie feels like a work of art in the way that it is shot and the choices made in how to frame scenes, blend images, and make unsettling transitions. It is certainly a puzzling spectacle, and while it did feel a bit too long, I can’t claim I was ever bored. This is a movie that trafficks in a lot of vibes, but at the end of the day it also delivers a rather robust mystery, and that is always a winning combination.