"The Banshees of Inisherin" is not the first tragicomedy about a fiddler and a milkman - Analysis with Spoilers
Great films invite multiple interpretations, so it is no wonder my take on Martin McDonagh's masterpiece, The Banshees of Inisherin , is unique. I don't see it as an allegory for the Irish Civil War. I don't see it as an indictment of an insular and parochial way of life. Instead, I see it as an existentialist portrait of the resilience of the human spirit in the face of life's absurd fragility. In fact, the best way to understand the film may be by comparing it to another tragicomic film also set in the early 20th-century--a film that, like Banshees , is about a milkman and a fiddler in a small village trying not to buckle under the weight of cultural strife. I'm talking about Norman Jewison's beloved classic, Fiddler On The Roof . I have been wanting to write about these two films for some time. Today is the day, in part because the Oscars are tomorrow and Banshees is my favorite for Best Picture, and also because yesterday we lost Chaim Topol, who performed