Darkly Irish at TIFF

Editor's Note: For the seventh consecutive year, Dawn and The Husband will be spending a few nights attending the Toronto International Film Festival, known to the locals as TIFF. While they can now proudly call themselves seasoned veterans of this madness, they have scaled back their viewing opportunities due to recent bouts with Covid and the fact that the TIFF website is a colossal shitshow, causing them to totally screw up our package. The roster of films is back up to pre-pandemic levels but is disappointingly sparse this year on digital viewing. Therefore, there will only be three films screened. Sitting through a two to three-hour film while masked is not ideal, but we do it in the name of normalcy and entertainment. TIFF still serves as a tremendous distraction from the world's ills and allows for some much-needed escapism during these tumultuous times. The next several posts will focus exclusively on TIFF and will offer very short bullet point reviews for the movies seen. You've all been warned.

A caveat. I love Ireland. It is, most assuredly, one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited. I love Irish theatre, literature, actors, and films. I believe the Irish create some of the most original and innovative art in the English-speaking world. So, knowing my quirky love of the Irish and with great excitement, we chose our final film for TIFF 2022, The Banshees of Inisherin. 

Writer/director Martin McDonagh reunites his In Bruges costars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson in one of the strangest and darkest comedies of the year. Set on a fictitious island off the coast of Ireland against the backdrop of the Irish civil war, McDonagh sharply examines the contours of friendship and how relationships can rapidly devolve. Farrell's slightly dim Padraic simply cannot fathom why his lifelong friend, Colm, doesn't want him in his life any longer. This is a career-defining performance from Colin Farrell. He imbues Padraic with such pathos and likeability that it is impossible not to feel his pain. Gleeson is his equal in every way, and as the relationship descends to its depths, it is Gleeson who maintains the equilibrium. The rest of the cast is spectacular as well. Kerry Condon is phenomenal as Padraic's worried sister, who can't wait to flee an obviously bizarre situation, as is Barry Keough, a troubled kid who simply cannot fathom the weirdness around him. There isn't a misstep in the entire film.

Whereas McDonagh's previous film Three Billboards in Ebbing Missouri, was frenetic and tough, Banshees relishes a more languid pace and environment but with no less sharpness and bitterness. The film really does belong to Mr. Farrell, and his win for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival portends a busy awards season for him. 

TIFF 2022 was an abbreviated one for us, but we hit home runs with all three of our films.

Dawn and The Husband give The Banshees of Inisherin two enthusiastic YUPS.

The Jewish/Irish Experience

I have often been fascinated by the shared experience that seems to exist between the immigrant Jew and the immigrant Irish. Obviously, there is the whole “stranger in a strange land” adventure that continually draws our two ethnicities in two intertwined circles upon our arrival on the North American shores but at its roots, there always seemed to be a simpatico response. It was like we empathized with each other on a much deeper level. While we have been touring Ireland, some of that bond has revealed itself. Both of our peoples have been shaken to their cores by a cataclysmic event that robbed us of our safety, our sustenance, our family bonds, and even threatened our very existence. For us Jews, The Holocaust stands apart as a period in our history from which we will never fully recover. For the Irish, there is a similar feeling about the Great Potato Famine of the 1840s.

Everything about the famine is still woven into the fabric of how the Irish see themselves as a people; how they view the world beyond their shores; how they look to replenish their native-born children; how they maintain their culture and heritage; and how they are now looking to future with the modernization of their economic and social growth. This is a damaged people, but one with resilience and fortitude. They take pride in their survival and refuse to allow the world to forget the injustices heaped upon them during that period where over one million souls perished from starvation and millions more fled in search of something better and didn’t always find it.

In the capital city of Dublin, those reminders are everywhere. We toured the Jeannie Johnston immigrant ship, one of the first to set sail for The United States and Canada with hundreds aboard. The Emigrant museum across the street is a fully interactive and multi-media experience that takes the guest through each and every wave of Irish emigration to all parts of the globe. (Did you know that former Israeli President Chaim Herzog has a grandparent from Ireland or that former US President Barack Obama’s great-grandmother was Irish?) The ability to maintain Irish culture and heritage so far from home has been nothing short of astounding and the number of people across the world who can trace some Irish ancestry numbers in the tens of millions.

Perhaps the most poignant memorial we encountered here in Dublin is an art installation that is right down on the banks of the river Liffey. A series of seven bronze statues, each depicting a starving Irish emigre, is shown getting ready to board a vessel bound for…wait for it…Toronto. Entitled Famine and created by artist Rowan Gillespie, shows the seven desperate, hunched over, and with terrified vacant expressions. There is the realization that they must board this boat, but a knowledge of all that they are leaving behind. They know that they will probably never see their homes or families again. The really cool part of this work is that there is a corresponding gathering of bronze figures in Ireland Park at the foot of Bathurst and Queen’s Quay in Toronto. There are only five statues in Canada as the artist wanted to diminish the set to account for the thirty percent lost during the journeys. A woman sculpted in Dublin appears pregnant in Toronto as many women became pregnant on their voyages. From Mr. Gillespie himself.

“Possibly the most dominant feature of the site are the huge grain silos which seem to symbolize the abundance of food in Canada, in contrast to the situation in Ireland. So there would be another figure of a man (they were mainly men who make the journey) in humble prayer and gratitude as he looks in almost disbelief at these symbols of plenty.”

I honestly never knew that these sculptures existed and that they are located not ten minutes from my home in Toronto. I am so terribly excited to visit them when we return.
The Irish experience has touched me deeply during our visit her in Dublin. I think I understand our bounds a bit better.