The Banshees of Inisherin is Too Bizarre to Exist

You know those studies that show that if you put a fancy label on tap water or $5 wine, snobby people won’t know the difference?

A lot of Oscar-nominated films start to pick up critical steam because the last awards-giving body (there are wayyyy too many of these) gave the film an award. People fool themselves into thinking that something head-scratching is good because, damn it, we all need to agree on what good art is.

There are two possibilities here. Either I don’t get the Banshees of Inisherin, and I am at fault for missing something. OR this is one of those films that doesn’t make sense, but people are going to suppress that confusion, because they’ve been told it’s a good film. I have a feeling this has been the case with Scorsese’s most recent Oscar-nominated films because he commands such a humongous mythos at this point.

So, personally, Banshees of Inisherin is one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever seen to be nominated for Oscar.

The first thing to notice here is that obsessive male friendships are either read as homo-erotic or people who are deranged in literature today. Unlike some more solitary men, I can admit I have a definite need for male friendship. Additionally, some of my best memories in life are because I had the right male friend with me at that moment to share it with. But the strange thing is that I wouldn’t necessarily devote literature to it and I’ve rarely seen literature about male friendships. So it’s very difficult…