There, I've said it. And the Golden Globes, and this writer from VOX who called it "a delightfully madcap tale of Irish zaniness" and everyone else chortling to themselves as they hop on the comedy bandwagon can all f off.
(This movie's been out long enough that I don't feel the need to worry about spoilers. So suffice it to say that, if you haven't seen the movie yet… and intend to… and you don't want any surprises spoiled, bookmark this post and come back after you've seen it.)
Let me be clear… I understand black comedy. I enjoy black comedy. And I loved In Bruges, the last movie these guys did together. So I looked forward to Banshees and couldn't wait to check it out.
I've now seen it three times, and only truly laughed at any of it the on the third watching (more on that in a moment). And I am more certain than ever that this movie, as good as it and its performances are, is not a comedy.
The first time through (early on, before the Golden Globes award) I laughed once, when Siobhán is talking to Colm and points out to him, when he complains about boredom, that he lives on an island off the Irish coast, so what did he expect. For some reason, that made me chuckle.
Then I watched it again a short while after the Globes, when I'd gotten tired of hearing how funny it was and wondered if I'd just missed something. I came into this viewing LOOKING for the humor. (OK, in retrospect, that action seems doomed to failure, when you put it like that). Clearly I failed, since even Siobhán's comment about boredom didn't make me laugh.
Finally, Dani got tired of hearing me complain about this and said maybe she should watch it and see what she thinks. I jumped on the chance to validate my unpopular opinion, so pulled it up the next time we were looking for something to watch.
What I learned from this watching was that Banshees was probably always a film that needed to be watched with people (instead of alone in the dark as my first two viewings had been). And, probably more importantly, to be watched with someone who loves to laugh, as my wife does. Because laugh she did... not hard and not frequently (though there was a moment she burst out full-on laughing). And I found myself a laughing along with her, after I grudgingly gave up on my refusal to find any humor in the film.
But having said that, it wasn't long before the laughing stopped. Probably some time before the infamous finger-cutting begins, but definitely once that started. From that point on, it was hard to find the funny, and simply became more and more unlikely that we'd laugh at anything else in the film. By the end of it, Dani opined that, while she did find it very funny in the beginning, once things went south, it became a tragedy... especially in regards to Pádraic, who would never be able to be the "nice" guy he liked to see himself as, once he's been through the wringer thanks to Colm's actions.
She reminded my of a play I once told her about, Red Noses, that I'd seen back in my UCI days. Red Noses is a 2 and a half hour comedy about the black death. And, for the first 2 hours plus, it's gut-wrenchingly funny. Until people start dying and you're in tears by the end. She likened Banshees to that play where it is fun and funny, and then things go south.
So if I'm labelling this one, I'd go back to a label I haven't heard since my theatre days... tragicomedy. Tragicomedy, as a genre, flourished (in one form or another) from the time of the Greeks to Shakespeare's time and into the early 20th century. We don't hear or use the word much today... it seems to have been replaced by absurdist in most uses, but it feels right for this movie. (And please don't try and sell me on "dramedy".. that has too much of the TV movie-of-the-week feel for me to apply it here.)
So please let's stop trying to sell everyone on the "comedy" angle here. It's misleading and can only lead to the same type of contempt I felt for this film and everyone having anything to do with it when I didn't find the promised humor.
(As an aside, I do love that the author of the VOX article felt the need to double down on the comedy aspect of Banshees in her closing paragraph. One gets the feeling she's been getting more than a little pushback on her "zany Irish humor" opinion. As well she should, imho.)
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