“The Banshees of Inisherin” should earn Colin Farrell an Oscar nomination

There’s a moment in The Banshees by Inisherinwhere you can see Colin Farrell’s soul being crushed.

In the new film from writer-director Martin McDonagh – best known for TThree billboards outside of Ebbing, Missouri—Farrell plays Pádraic Súilleabháin, a farmer on a small Irish island in 1923. His best friend and drinking buddy Colm Doherty (Brendan Gleeson) has just told him he doesn’t want to hang out with him anymore. Pádraic did nothing in particular to offend Colm; Colm just finds him boring and wants to spend his short time on Earth writing violin songs instead of talking about the contents of Pádraic’s animal shit. Farrell’s face goes from confused to heartbroken in a matter of moments. It’s further proof that it’s about time for Colin Farrell to earn an Oscar nomination.

At this point, it’s just kind of crazy that Colin Farrell hasn’t been recognized by the academy in any way. Since his rise to fame in the early 2000s, he’s shrugged off his initial tabloid reputation to become one of the most intriguing actors in the business, one whose presence always brings a nuance to any film he stars in. And yet somehow he still feels underappreciated, like someone you can just count on to be good, rather than someone who you are reward for being good.

This year has been a celebration for Farrell fans. in the After Yang, he was dumb and sad like a man trying to bond with his adopted daughter after her beloved robotic companion malfunctioned. It is his turn The Batman was essentially the opposite of that — as a penguin, he’s a de Niro cast cloaked in prosthetics. And, hey, you probably didn’t get it Thirteen LivesRon Howard’s take on Thai cave rescue, but Farrell was pretty great in this disappointing film playing one of the stoic divers who managed to save the football team.

He ends the year with banshees, which allows him to make work that plays to all of his strengths, particularly his ability to find pathos in absurdity. He should be celebrated for that.

The Banshees by Inisherin come to the fall festival this month. After premiering this weekend at the Venice Film Festival, an event that’s more stingy with that kind of celebration than, say, the Cannes crowd, it received a 13-minute standing ovation. The film reunites Farrell with McDonagh, who was the first to recognize that Farrell was a perfect match for his brand of (extremely) dark Irish humor In Brugess. This film also starred Farrell and Gleeson as misfits stranded in a sleepy Belgian town awaiting direction from their boss.

When In Bruges Released in 2008, Farrell wasn’t far from a stint in rehab and was still largely tied to the “bad boy” image that had dogged his rise to fame in Hollywood. He worked with directors such as Oliver Stone and Michael Mann, but in films that were considered underachievements, at least at the time. (Man’s MiamiVice has since been reclaimed by cinephiles for the masterpiece that it is; stone Alexandernot as much.)

As Farrell has aged, his career choices have only gotten more exciting. He turned out to be the muse of Yorgos Lanthimos in the lobster and Killing a frightened deer, slips into the offbeat sets with the Greek director’s knack for dryness. He leaned into his good looks to play a handsome wounded soldier in a hothouse of female desire in Sofia Coppola The seducedand morphed into a ruthless Chicago politician for Steve McQueen widows.

banshees feels like both a homecoming of sorts and an extension of his most creative output for Farrell. It brings him back to his home country and into the orbit of two of his former collaborators, but it’s also transformative. He doesn’t hide his face like in The Batmanbut he is miles away from the suave movie star whose eyes are brimming with sly intelligence.

Pádraic is, to put it bluntly, not a smart man. He’s a man of simple pleasures: he loves his animals, especially a little donkey, and goes to the pub with his pal Colm for a pint every day around 2pm. When Colm puts a stop to it, his world is turned upside down. And although Colm threatens to harm himself should Pádraic even speak to him, Pádraic refuses to leave him alone, allowing a fairly simple disagreement to escalate to violent endings. The experience fundamentally changes Pádraic’s psychological state. Farrell lets his sweet dullness pass until his heart hardens with bitterness.

banshees might not really be the academy’s thing. The famous organization squandered nominations on McDonagh’s Three billboards, but this was a (controversial) film that spoke out loud about its themes of racism and sexual abuse. While the plot of banshees is a brilliant metaphor for the Irish Civil War, which McDonagh portrays as an unnecessarily bloody battle between former friends for no real reason, and is also small in scale and scope. Take it at face value and it’s just about two men acting childishly.

That’s why I’m concerned that Farrell will once again be overlooked by the Oscars. There will be other performances this year that are louder and more important, but Pádraic Súilleabháin is a character that will live in my mind, a totally unique creation by a totally unique actor.