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Hello, and welcome back. Before this week’s quick rec, you might as well take 33 seconds to listen to Prince Harry talking about his frozen, creamy todger. OK, good. Now that’s out of the way, here’s something a little more edifying. I put together a playlist to accompany the 12-film Free Jazz series that I organized for the Criterion Channel, and which launched back in November. Perhaps you could stick it on while reading this excellent new essay on free jazz, entitled “Their Sounds Were Watching God” by the critic and poet Harmony Holiday. Enjoy!
I had a little chuckle to myself this week when I saw that Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin—a pitch-black portrait of the bitter, sudden friendship break-up of two men (played by Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson), set against the backdrop of the Irish Civil War—had waltzed away with the “Best Motion Picture: Musical or Comedy” award at the Golden Globe awards. The category itself remains hilariously broad and arbitrary, even after the eligibility rules were changed following an inexplicable victory in 2016 for Ridley Scott’s sci-fi drama The Martian—following that result, it was deemed that “dramas with comedic overtones should be entered as dramas”.
In truth, there’s nothing factually inaccurate about The Banshees of Inisherin winning a comedy award—and who really cares about awards categories? It is bleakly funny in places, and full of McDonagh’s characteristically ornate, salty banter and absurdist situations. It’s just that, to my mind at least, it also happens to be the most crushingly sad major studio picture I’ve seen in years. A tragicomedy where the “tragi” ultimately beats the “comedy” into pulp with a lead pipe.
I attended a matinee screening at New York’s Angelika Film Center, and went in with relatively low expectations, having not been a fan—an understatement, really—of McDonagh’s overly self-indulgent last two films, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) and Seven Psychopaths (2012). From the very little I knew about Banshees in advance, I’d primed myself for a spiritual and tonal sequel to McDonagh’s enjoyably crass and florid film debut In Bruges (2008), which also starred Farrell and Gleeson. What I got instead left me needing a good five-minute sit down in the lobby afterwards to collect myself.
Now, it goes without saying that peoples’ individual responses to this film are going to be subjective, but it hit me like a ton of bricks. It’s a tenebrous tale of arrogance, abuse, and (spiritual, geographical) isolation that obliquely explores the pointless destructiveness of war, and intelligently picks at knotty tendrils connecting received notions about what it means to be a “good”, “nice”, or “interesting” person, and the function of art in society. Then, of course, there’s the friendship death stuff.
I won’t go into detail (after all, anyone—or no-one—could be reading this), but I went through something similar about a decade ago: a very close, fifteen-year friendship that flatlined on the spot, never to be revived. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film that’s explored the pain and confusion of such an event with such perceptive acuity or brutal honesty. I was, I confess, triggered.
So yes, The Banshees of Inisherin, winner of the Golden Globe award for “Best Motion Picture: Musical or Comedy”, is funny. But it is laughter in the dark. Yuck it up.
Before I go, I wanted to herald the return of writer Tom Ewing’s “Populist” project, in which he reviews every UK Number One chart single since 1952. For a while, Ewing had stalled at 2003, a year which, oddly, marked pretty much the exact time that I stopped listening to/engaging with contemporary pop music, so enervated and appalled was I by the hostile takeover and overweening influence of the Simon Cowell-verse and demeaning reality TV competitions.
Ewing’s back now, starting with the first Number Ones of 2004. I look forward to reading along and learning about what I’ve missed in the last couple decades of British pop music, even if I might not always be listening along. (I read recently that something called “LadBaby” had scored five consecutive Christmas Number Ones in the UK. I had never heard of “LadBaby”, which illustrates how out of the loop I am.)
Anyway, in tribute to the late, great Terry Hall, who died last month, let’s close this week with a little excerpt from Ewing’s take on The Specials’ “Ghost Town”, which hit the top spot on 11th July 1981.
[I]f the grim energy of “Ghost Town” hadn’t fitted the times so well, even if the song had remained simply a lament for a scene (and a band) in breakdown, it would still be a gothic masterpiece. The near-coincidence that made “Ghost Town” a legend – British cities erupting in riot while this sat at Number 1 – shouldn’t obscure the fact that this is an astonishing achievement anyway. It’s the culmination of Jerry Dammers’ obsession with easy listening and program music, the perfect patchwork of those influences and the Specials’ tight ska roots, the sound of a group getting it stunningly right (and promptly imploding: “Ghost Town” is as unfollowable as “Good Vibrations”). From the dust-laden fade-in to the faltering heartbeat drums on the fade, there’s not one single element in this song that doesn’t work beautifully.
Until next week!
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I've had two friendships - one from adulthood but that lasted a decade, and another with my best friend from college - just utterly flatline without any explanation from the one time friends (it happening twice definitely made me wonder if it were a me thing) and that definitely added a whole other bittersweet layer to this film for me.