Which is one of the weirdest and heaviest hitting films I've seen recently, and while there is some comedy, it is not a funny movie.
I may be missing a detail or two, and would happily be corrected, but for the curious:
- Green = Catholics / IRA supporters
- Yellow/Orange = Protestants
- Red = English
- Blues = Anglo-Irish Treaty supporters (?)
edit: formatting
I'm asking because I picked up a hitchhiker way back when that was an ordinary thing to do, and he was a vocational school grad, but told me this whole thing about how the Wizard of Oz was a parable about the gold standard (follow the yellow bricks to the Emerald City) vs greenback dollar, with the cowardly lion (Dept of Defence) and the Tin Man (midwest industrial might) and Scarecrow (agriculture), pitting the witches of the North and South and East and West... you get the picture. It's a very tight theory, and I was shocked I hadn't learned this in my college track/college career.
and I believed it for the next decades till I found out: it wasn't true.
So I ask you again, is this something you know you know? I only have time left to believe one new thing and I need to be sure of it
I can't really speak to this, which is why I have a (?) around the meaning of Blue. I can say that green, orange, and red have pretty obvious connections, especially given the context of the film taking place during the Irish Civil War, which directly followed the Irish War of Independence (from England, who wore red in battle).
If it helps assuage your fear, you can take a look at the meaning of the colors of the Irish flag to see context for green and orange.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_interpretations_of_T...
Not the sectarian "troubles" and IRA, circa the 1970s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles
This is one of my favorite scenes in recent memory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBIsqYO9l8w
What acting.
But I suspect a lot of that is a subjective taste, so it's not surprising it's not widely appreciated.
I find Irish people perfectly charming, but when it comes to the themes of Irish film and literature, charming does not oft spring to my lips. Did you watch this film to the end? warmed the cockles of your heart did it?
Both are wonderful Black comedies, imo. I agree that the story and characters are different (but that's to be expected given they are different movies after all) but the mood is similar between the two. I'll concede that Banshees is darker than Bruges, though.
I found it absolutely not funny, very strange, and didn't like any of it one bit. Shame, because I really like most of what both leads do.
I'd rather cut off a finger than watch it again. And making that joke was the only time I've laughed about that awful movie.
"What is art?" I started to enjoy film more when I understood that the best directors are just telling a story and not don't care if you like it or not. Of course you are free to hate it.
The same applies to any form of art.
If you want a movies easy to enjoy, there's the superhero blockbuster movies and Star Wars, I guess.
The story was perfect for a short film and not a feature film. I bet if you edit the movie down to 20-25 minutes it will make a fantastic piece of art.
Agree to disagree. I found it funny. Just try describing it to someone, and the premise is actually hilarious. But yes, dark, and heartbreaking in certain scenes. Great film.
Gleeson and Farrell are good actors, but for me the script let them down. It felt like it was trying too hard to be meaningful or symbolic but nothing landed.
Barry Keoghan was the best thing about it, amazing performance.
The melancholy, loneliness, and utterly pointless violence far outweighed the occasional laugh.
I’ll be hit randomly in my day with recollections from the film and chuckle or even burst out laughing. More so than In Bruges or 3Billboards.
“That’s the same way my mammy died.” And “I’m here for the opposite of that. What’s the opposite of licks? I don’t know.” And “It takes two to tango. I don’t want to dance. You were dancing with your dog.”
He has that hangdog, depressed and confused thing going on that's so charming.
Surprised it got that much hype
Sibling comments are correct, on review, that it seems you can work around it by holding down in advance.
Unfortunately by the time I verified that I had run out of time since I spent most of what I had trying to make it work on my own before returning to the thread to offer this feedback.
Personally, I think the idea is good enough that I will try to return on desktop later when I have time… but for the devs - if you read this - you could really enable a lot more people to get a lot further in this presumably great creative experience if you made the controls respond better on mobile.
I tried it on keyboard and it's a bit more playable, but frustrating for players like myself who more than have the dexterity to press exactly when I want to.
A+ for humour, artistic style, and concept... D for play-ability.
I suppose it's supposed to be an allegory to the futility of the Irish Civil War? If we the audience can't make a connection to something like that it feels a bit too abstract.
I didn't make it far into the game, but it is a neat project.
I liked it more than Three Billboards, but not as much as the excellent In Bruges.
Banshees felt distant. Was it about Irish society specifically? I don't know much about Ireland but I got the feeling that this was a really fringe island community and probably not representative of Ireland realistically or figuratively. I don't really feel like the themes it was presenting were universal. Perhaps the timeliness was an issue. idk.
In Bruges is like peak black comedy. the themes itself, on some level, are pretty damn funny, which isn't a thing you really see in many works.
As an example of this, much (and probably most) of good modern Russian cinema is a completely unexpressed metaphor between "old Russia" and "new Russia." What that actually means, oddly enough, isn't especially relevant. In America one could easily see it as a metaphor between religion and secularism, urban and rural, woke or not, liberal and conservative, and so on endlessly. You can even see it as an internal metaphor of our younger selves vs our older selves.
And the great thing is - is that it, in many ways, fits all of these contrasts perfectly. Because the details of the exact change that's "really" being contrasted, aren't nearly as relevant as how we, as humans, handle change and conflict. Or in this specific metaphor, how both sides of some issue may one another as wrong/inferior/flawed/etc from their own perspective. And how both are simultaneously right and wrong.
A movie that's absolutely excellent on this front is, "How I Ended This Summer." Even the title of the movie itself is a metaphor. The first time I watched that movie I did not especially like (nor dislike) it, but when you stop watching it literally, and as a broad unclarified metaphor it morphs into an excellent piece of art - even with 0 personal context of what the metaphor is "really" about.
I would say the island community was more like a caricature of rural Irish society than an accurate representation. I feel like there was a universality to the themes explored but I agree that they are viewed through a very local lens.
Pretty certain that Colm Doherty was not referring to this game when he said this, but somehow it seems applicable.
Brilliant job!
It doesn't make much sense it was created as a marketing device for a movie, it's not that kind of movie. However, considering names and graphics it looks totally as authorized work. My guess is it's a marketing device for an agency, which worked with a movie crew in some capacity and was granted a permission to use these assets for a bit of self-promotion.
But it is beautifully photographed.
No connection at all with the common antecedent: British imperialism; slavery in America's case and a colonial legacy of partition imposed at gun point in Ireland's.
Controls are still a bit clunky (slow to respond), but do work.
It’s a remote island right, and I think the history makes the more recent transformation more impressive and interesting.
I enjoyed the film. There was this nagging feeling the whole time that there was supposed to be some sort of metaphor for the conflict in Ireland but I knew nothing about it, so it felt like I was missing something. I don't know that I really understood what it was trying to say either way. I liked 'In Bruges' a lot more personally.
You're probably better off not knowing - any attempts at serious commentary on that conflict by the film didn't land well with anyone more informed. It's an enjoyable, likeable film, but cultural or political insights aren't McDonagh's strong points.
I also really liked Three Billboards, though I heard it received similar criticisms for its clumsy portrayal of US political themes (which I'm more distant from).
I didn’t read any criticisms of the film that seemed serious to me. I didn’t seek out too many reviews but probably read a dozen that boiled down to “portrayed racists in positive light” and that just seemed to not understand the film much at all. But there may be more detailed and nuanced criticism that I haven’t seen.
The specific critique I recall being levelled at it in this context was more "racist has apparent redemption arc by helping white people, despite never addressing/showing remorse for past acts of racism", which doesn't seem as simplistic.
Personally I didn't come away feeling the character was redeemed anyway, so if that was intended as a redemption arc I missed it. But mostly I just didn't treat it as serious political commentary & just enjoyed the witty writing & delivery.
Makes me wish for more unconventional film-game adaptations.
Thank you.
Highly recommend.
But if you don't like the start of that path, you probably won't like the middle or end.
