The Banshees Of Inisherin: Allegory, Stakes and Structure

hello I'm Jacob Krueger and this is the write your screenplay podcast this week we're going to be looking at the Banshees of in assuring by Martin McDonough um it's really was very interesting watching the Golden Globes with this film up against everything everywhere all at once because everything everywhere all at once was such an overwhelming script right such an extraordinarily Complicated movie and the Banshees of in assurance is such a simple movie um and I thought it was very just interesting to see those two scripts in head-to-head competition with each other um because they really represent the far extremes of the different spectrums of what a great screenplay can be and the truth is these are both really really effective screenplays as we get deeper into this podcast we're going to talk about some of the more complicated elements underneath the apparent Simplicity of this script we're going to talk about the piece as a political allegory for the Irish Civil War and the troubles in Ireland that took place in the many years after it but first I want to talk about one of the biggest accomplishments of the film which is to create Stakes out of a situation that almost anyone would consider extremely low stakes now there are going to be some spoilers ahead so if you have not yet watched banshees of an assurance what are you doing run out and watch it and then come back to this podcast so banshees takes place on a mythical Island uh during the Irish Civil War but the Irish Civil War is barely barely seen right it's basically just some distant uh explosions and a couple of references among the characters they live in this perfect idyllic Community or at least what seems like it and for in fact the first image of the piece we're gonna see this perfect rainbow right in along this beautiful Town um and it's actually it's very very green screen but it almost works that it looks fake right because it's like so perfect so happy it almost feels like we're gonna start a musical or something and we're watching this really happy nice guy named Patrick who just loves his life and loves his sister and loves his town and loves his best friend and we're just watching him on a journey to go find his best friend calm so that they can have a drink and this is the normal world of this piece it is it is happiness turned up almost to a mythical level right it's the kind of idyllic dream that we have of a home it's the way this relatively simple man sees his home as just the loveliest place on Earth and it's not until page 55 of the script that's 55 of a 94 page script that the first truly horrible thing actually happens and that is incredible um that means that Martin McDonough has basically created unflinching drama for 54 Pages for more than half the script without actually allowing a single act of violence to happen he has wrestled one simple idea maybe he doesn't want to be your friend anymore into nearly an hour of hugely compelling screen time with tremendous Stakes so I want to talk about this I want to talk about how to build stakes in your movie and how to use the Banshees of in assurance to understand stakes and how they're built [Music] building Stakes is one of the most common notes that you will receive as a screenwriter you're going to get this note all the time the stakes are low the stakes are low the stakes are low the stakes are low it kind of felt low stakes I wasn't connected I don't know I didn't care right you're gonna get those notes all the time and often you get those notes and you're sitting back and you're like I don't understand like I blew up a school I killed a baby I sent a dog on fire like why are there no Stakes and then you see a movie like the Banshees of inner Sharon and for 55 Pages nothing happens and yet we feel a tremendous sense of stakes almost always when somebody says the stakes are low it is not because you haven't killed somebody almost always when somebody says the stakes are low it means either we don't know what the character really wants or we know what the character wants but he's not or she's not or they're not going for it with everything in their body right or we're not clear on how the character goes for what they want that's different than everybody else or we're not clear what the obstacle is right almost always when you get the low stakes notes it's not about the plot it's not about what happens it's about I don't understand what the character wants and what makes it hard because Stakes are literally just what does she want what makes it hard what does he want what makes it hard that's what Stakes are now there's another element of stakes which is called threat um now part of the reason Martin McDonough gets away with not even having the threat stated until 31 pages into the movie is his name is Martin McDonough you have seen his movies or at least you've heard about him you know about imbrugge or if you are a play a fan of theater you know that this man is famous for creating the bloodiest plays ever staged right so part of the threat is that you know it's Martin McDonough you know it's gonna get ugly and so you're waiting to see how it gets ugly just in case you don't know who Martin McDonough is the movie is also called the Banshees of inner Sharon now if you know what a Banshee is you know a Banshee is a screaming harbinger of death so you know something terrible is going to happen even if you don't know Marty you know something terrible is going to happen just from the title so this shows you some of the power of the title and even if you don't know what a Banshee is the first image tells you that something terrible is going to happen the first image and it doesn't tell you by being a terrifying image it tells you by being such an over the top positive image we know we're not watching a Disney movie right we know that this is gonna get ugly we can feel the pressure inside that first image that's so over the top sunshiny right but it's with its literal rainbow so we have all those elements going for us um suggesting threat in subtle ways and yet we also have to recognize a lot of people don't know what banshees are a lot of people don't know who Marty is and a lot of people aren't gonna realize that we're not in the beginning of a musical that we're not going to watch a sunshiny story so yes Martin McDonough is building threats but he's only building in a way that the most sensitive of viewers that are going to actually get at so why does the movie work for everybody threat is a valuable element thanks but it's not a necessary element of stakes what is necessary is investment so we meet this character Parikh and he's so easy to get invested in because he loves his town and he loves his life and we know what he wants it's actually the simplest want ever he wants to go get a drink with his good friend he wants to say hide the policeman who never says hi back he wants to go to the pub and shoot the with what he would call some regular talk he wants to spend time with his donkey right this is what the guy wants we get him and he's shown up and the most unexpected thing happened the hardest thing for him to deal with happens he knocks on his friend's window calms window and calm just sits there smoke he doesn't respond at all and neither he nor we know what to do with it but we can feel his shock and at this point almost all of it's being handled with comedy he goes home to his sister not sure what to do his sister says are you Rowan are you fighting because I didn't think we were around and his sister teases him ah maybe he just doesn't like you anymore right she's teasing it's impossible these guys love each other he goes to the bar they ask him the same question was he sleeping are you rowing I don't think we're rounding he realized maybe we're in a fight he says maybe I should go see him again but understand goes yeah I think that's probably best he goes back to his friend right so think about this from a traditional structure perspective you have a character who wants something get a beer with his friend that doesn't seem high stakes the stakes come from his actions in relation to it right if he shows up knocks on the door says screw it and goes gets a drink nothing happened but his actions he's navigating different obstacles first the extreme obstacle the inciting incident the extreme Obstacle of his friend going not even responding to him then the Obstacle of his sister not getting that this could even be real then the Obstacle of the bartender asking the same question not processing this either but we're seeing him want to get this answer he needs to know what happened to his friend he needs to know why his friend is mad and so what happens is we get sucked into the stakes of the same mystery as he is right we care because he cares because we feel him taking action so he goes running back to his friend's house he opened the door and goes inside looks at a bunch of scary masks his friend's not there and then he looks out and his friend is heading away he doesn't know what to make of that you so you can see we just played the same game just out did the same obstacle he goes back to the bar he orders a pint and he tries to sit down next to calm sits down next to his friend and his friend asks him to move again he wants to know what's going on with his friend so he goes no my this is the beer I ordered and the bartender backs him up yeah he he ordered this beer that's why he's here combo is okay I'll go outside and calm goes and sits outside now you can see this is exactly the same beat as what happened in the previous scene but it outdoes the previous interaction with calm so we've had three interactions with calm now interaction number one goes to his house the guy doesn't respond at all interaction number two goes to his house the guy seems to have left and gone somewhere just to be away from him interaction number three the guy chooses to go sit outside rather than sit next to him at the bar in comedy we would call this the game of the scene and the thing in comedy as we know you just keep playing the game again and again and again out doing that game and what happens is it gets funnier and funnier and the stakes start to feel higher and higher but we often forget that there's a game of the scene and drama too and that's what we're seeing here and we're seeing how Stakes connect to the game of the scene in the Banshees of in assurance Okay so our character takes a new action I'm gonna go outside and I'm gonna talk to him and he basically refuses to leave he says if you go back inside I'm gonna go back inside he goes back outside I'm gonna I need to know what I did did I say something when I was drunk did I do something that upset you and calm responds no you didn't do anything I just don't like you anymore and with that bizarre little interaction our main character is devastated and he will spend the rest of the movie just trying to make his friend like him again and his friend will take bigger and bigger and bigger and more and more and more drastic actions to end the friendship until things in the final third of the movie after page 55 escalate into a full out Civil War so this is a very simple concept that I want you to keep in your head Martin McDonough builds 55 pages of stakes just out of a character who wants something real bad and who's willing to take actions that most of us are not willing to take so most of us by like the third time our friend tells us data I just don't like you anymore we're gonna be like guess he doesn't like me I'll hang out with other people but this character just needs to be liked he needs to know that he's not Dull he needs to know that he's not the lowest in the pecking order and Martin McDonough being such a great writer just keeps on picking on that the guy that he thinks is lowest in the pecking order uh Dominic right the the the Gom right of the town the dumbest guy in the town ends up knowing a word to say that he doesn't know right so he's knocking down his status and what we're really watching is a character just trying to raise his status back up to Friendship we're having this incredibly personal Journey it's not until page 31 that we finally get the threat and here's the threat the threat is if you talk to me again called says and if you don't stop bothering me or sending your sister or your priest to bother me they didn't send me sister to bother you did I she has her own mind although I did send the priest to only have me there what I've decided to do is this I have a set of shears at home and each time you bother me from this day on I'll take those shears and I take one of my fingers off with them what we start to realize holy crap we know what's gonna happen in this movie calm has to cut off a finger you both want him to do it and want him not to right so you're watching and you are predicting the future you know that if the character does not cut off his fingers you're gonna be disappointed because you were promised some cut off fingers and if anything less happens it's going to feel like the air went out of the balloon like well that was a lot easier than he promised but you also know that it can't happen exactly the way you expect it has to go somewhere beyond what you expect because if we just keep watching digits get cut off one by one the movie's gonna get really predictable and boring again when you're playing the game of the scene you have to keep out doing right you can't do it at the same level so we know there needs to be some twists and turns and then there's the other part of you that's going I don't want to see this guy get his fingers cut off I don't want to watch that you're going please please please no pirate don't talk to him don't talk to him don't talk to him don't talk to him and you realize this takes the same as in this slasher movie where you're going don't go up the stairs don't go up the stairs oh don't go up the stairs right and you start to realize that the stakes are growing and your tension is growing because you know it's gonna happen and you're just asking when and how and basically for the next 24 pages what Martin McDonough is doing is building the psychological process the structural Journey the series of choices the series of obstacles that lead our main character parekh to actually talk to this guy again and as everybody including us including all his friends kind of knows he's going to cut off those fingers if you do it everyone knows except Paul Rick because Pyrex a little bit dull because pyrek needs his friendship to work so badly so around 55 about almost an hour into the script more than halfway through the moment that we would call the sea change in a 7x structure pyrek pushes it too far talks to the guy and so slightly before we get to page 55. Parikh gets drunk and we're waiting we're waiting we're waiting we know we're like oh God he's in the bar he's drunk he's gonna talk to him and he does talk to him not only does he talk to him he makes a huge choice he's never made before he attacks him and again we know what's going to happen but it can't happen the way we expect so calm has the most ironic reaction that anyone could imagine him having which is his sister shows up and goes look calm I'm gonna talk to him I'm gonna make sure he doesn't talk to you again and comments it's kind of a shame I it's the most interesting he's ever been and I actually like him again and we go huh maybe this isn't going to play out the way it is but we know we hear that teapot whistling in the background oh it's gonna happen we know it's gonna happen but it didn't happen the way we expected in fact it's not until parekh shows up again and tries to apologize to him and goes back to being his normal dull self that there I'm 55 about an hour into the script at the moment that we call a sea change in a 7x structure he finally does it and again even that has to outdo we're terrified we're going to watch him physically cut off his fingers we're actually not going to watch that instead while his sister is talking to Patrick we hear a thunk and pot Rick goes running out sees his friend calm heading down the path and then sees the blood stain on his door and the finger on the ground and we have this horrible and funny scene with his sister where he goes well it's hard to lie right and he's got to explain the finger to his sister and to make sure that we're propelled into the second half of the movie most of us will go oh God oh man I feel terrible I'm truly never going to talk to that guy again ah awful no no pirate goes I'm gonna bring that finger back to him and his sister goes are you an idiot right and we could see no he's gonna keep doing the same game even in the face of the guy cutting off his finger he's gonna keep playing the same game and again this is where the stakes come from right the state come from the character who refuses to let go of his want even in the face of of challenges obstacles that anyone else would be like my friend just cut off his finger I'm out and a really interesting thing happens as he continues to break through to his friend we've had a couple moments earlier we start to realize that there's a love between these two there's a really beautiful interaction where they talk about calm song one of the things that calm has told uh Paul Rick is without Pyrex in name conversation he is going to leave a legacy of music and he's been working on this song called the Banshees of Innis Sharon and he's finished it and they had this beautiful moment between the two of them where they talk about the song and you can see the love that was once there and so again we know what's coming but it's not coming at us the way that we expect it to come at us so we go we go through all these twists and turns right and we know we know it's gonna happen again we know it's gonna happen again in fact but again it's got to happen can't just be a digital time so calm helps amplify the stakes calm says next time he comes I'm going to cut off all four fingers and of course that ends up being exactly what happened he ends up cutting all off all four fingers meanwhile our character is changing we've met a guy at the beginning who is so nice and no one appreciates his niceness they think he's dull and he starts to become not nice because he thinks he's got to be tough and he's going to be less nice in order to actually be loved by these people so he's changing home is changing calm starts being totally cruel but we're watching little chinks in the armor I'm wondering can these guys actually become friends again and so we know what's going to happen but we're also being misled by these little opportunities that make us wonder is it going to happen the way we expect and make us hope that part of us is like no no no don't make him cut off his fingers make us hope that maybe there's another path and that's where the stakes come from so I want to break this down for you again what does he want what makes it hard what choices does he make that nobody else would make that change him and change the people around him that take him on a journey that both goes to the terrible place we fear and he fears goes beyond the terrible place we fear and he fears but doesn't get there exactly the way you expect this is where Stakes come from you can use threat you can imply threat and sometimes you can even get away without threat as long as they want the obstacle and the choice are a hundred percent clear we end up of course with four fingers being thrown up against the door but again we have to push it further it has to go somewhere we're not expecting right if it's just going to be fingers we're going to be disappointed because that was promised way back on page 30. and the piece is going to start to feel predictable and it's got to go to an unpredictable place so at this point we thought we were going to get one at a time it turns out we're going to get one and then we're going to get four and we're going oh crap what's coming next and it's Martin McDonough so we know whatever's coming ain't gonna be pretty but what we don't see coming is another relationship that's been built that matters to the main character and it's been built so subtly and hidden under so much humor that we haven't even realized it but outside of his sister who's leaving him forever because she's tired of this crap and because she has an opportunity on the mainland they'll actually let her live a decent life she has fled this mythical island of tranquility and peace that's turned into hell and outside of Dominic the guy he looks down on who's basically his version of himself what he is to everybody else that's what dominic is to him he's a nice guy but he's a little bit dull but you talk to him because you want to be nice even though he's a little bit of a pain in the butt right that's who Hugh public is to the rest of the Town that's who Dominic is to him even Dominic doesn't want to deal with him anymore because he's changing and becoming less nice of a person the only other relationship in this man's life is his relationship with Jenny the Donkey and it's all handled so beautifully right it's all handled for comedy again using the same Concepts wants and obstacles so Parikh wants the Donkey to hang out in the house because he's sad and because he loves the donkey because the donkey makes him feel better and his sister wants the donkey out of the house because she is a normal intelligent human being and so this is running gag of him letting the donkey into the house bringing the donkey into the house in fact once his sister leaves he just lets all the animals into the house and the house is overrun with animals it's all played for comedy it just seems like a joke so you're not even noticing that a relationship is being built but Martin McDonough is noticing he's building that relationship for a reason because he needs to take this place this piece to the place that you didn't see and of course what's going to end up happening and there's also a little running thing here it's so subtle but you're always seeing Jenny the donkey is always trying to eat off the table always trying to eat something Jenny the donkey again there's a spoiler ahead ends up choking on one of the fingers and losing his sister his best friend the guy he used to look down on and now his beloved donkey something switches in potrick and now it's poverick who wants Vengeance now it is parekh who's coming after Justice for his lost donkey now it is not just parekh the victim it is Parikh the aggressor and calm who said all he wanted was some silence some peace so he could create some music has brought himself to a place where he has no fingers to play music with and where he is inadvertently killed the donkey and feeling guilty about it in fact I'm gonna play you some clips later where I'm going to show you these two incredible scenes uh with a preacher but he actually confesses his sin of accidentally killing the donkey so he's feeling terrible but now the war has started and there's this absolutely incredible scene where comes to calm in front of everybody and says I'm gonna burn your house down at 2PM tomorrow and I'm not gonna check to see if you're in there but leave the dog outside because he is the only nice part about you so we have this new threat it's gone from I'm gonna cut off my own fingers and powerick just desperately wanting friendship again to a flip to I'm going to destroy your home and you if you're in there and Parikh wanting to destroy his friend there's also another mirror there's a scene earlier where Parikh apologizes and says so so are we even then and column says why can't you just leave me alone he doubles down and we get the reversal of that the foil of that on the other side where it's after Parikh has burned down his house looked back seen calm inside the house let the House burn it turns out that comb did leave the house and the two of them meet on the beach the same plays the first Exchange took place and com says does this make us even right extends his hand can we shake on it right and Pyrex says no if you'd stayed in the house we'd be even this is going to stay with us till our deaths right so do you see the giant flip our main character through this simple want of becoming friends the obstacles the choices the accidental death of the donkey who he loves who is his primary relationship having lost everything else in his life has flipped from wanting friendship to wanting vengeance and the guy who just wanted to be left alone and wasn't allowing there to be peace now just wants peace there's been this giant flip in the structure of the story and we've gotten to where we expected to go we know this thing is going to lead to a bloodbath we know it's going to lead to a war but we haven't gotten there the way we expected to get there we never expected parekh be the violent one we never expected powerick to be the guy who wasn't gonna want to end the war and so you can see what's happening here we've only talked about this on a structural level we haven't talked about it as an allegory yet for the Irish troubles or the Irish Civil War which we're about to talk about but I want to show you first whenever you're building an allegory whenever you're building a script that is much more complicated than what's really going on on the page you got to make sure the character elements are there your characters can't just be metaphors you have to build the drama on top of it in the same way if you're building an action movie it can't just be action you got to build the drama on top of it it's always about the relationships it's always about the people that matter it's always about what does he want what's the obstacle what choice does he make how does the thing that he or we most fear manifest in his life and how does it do it in a way that out does twists and surprises our expectations that's where Stakes come from that's where drama comes from that's where structure comes from and on the simplest level you can see how simple this movie is it's a bunch of reflected scenes of first I want to be your friend I want to be your friend I want to be your friend don't talk to me don't talk to me don't talk to me that's the game of the scene then it becomes I want to be your friend I'm gonna I'm cutting off a finger I want to be your friend I'm cutting off a hand an escalation of stakes to self-mutilation and then it becomes this odd flip to Revenge where the nice character goes to the vengeful character you can see that's super simple and it's unbelievably compelling if you go back to everything everywhere all at once you'll see it's actually the same thing the whole movie for all this complexity is all set up in that very simple scene in the convenience store which by the way is not in an early draft that's a rewrite it's really just a story of a girl who wants to be accepted by her mother and a mother who is so overwhelmed by trying to control the world that she's not hearing anyone around her that the simple story that's happening that's getting blown up with all this complexity so whether you're building a simple movie like the Banshees of an assurance or whether you're building a super complicated action movie like uh like everything everywhere all at once you're actually building around the same fundamental elements you're still just building a drama and this is true if you're building just a silly comedy too you're always just building a drama and by what I'm what I mean by that is you're building a story about characters who want stuff facing huge obstacles making choices they've never made before and allowing the worst possible thing to manifest but not in the way they expect it you're telling a story of change underneath all that Simplicity is something much more complicated and much more profound so this is really a story about the Irish Civil War which then led to the Troubles of Ireland and little clues about that allegory are dripped throughout this entire movie absolutely brilliantly executed Clues they're dropped in you barely notice the little bits of exposition but I'm about to read you the most important one of these foreign ER the abusive policeman Dominic's dad is in the bar with calm and Parikh is very jealous because calm is talking to this total jerk of a man he won't even talk to him and Peter is extremely excited because he is being paid a fortune to go to the mainland for an execution just in case things get out of hand there and he says this the Free State Lads are executing a couple of the IRA labs or is it the other way around I find it hard to follow these days wasn't it so much easier when we was all on the same side and it was just the English we were killing I think it was I preferred it this little monologue delivered by the worst person in the whole movie is actually the key to understanding what Martin McDonough is actually saying with this movie what he's actually saying is this we used to all beyond the same side we were friends Protestants and Catholics even though unlikely friends like calm and parekh we were friends we were on the same side fighting the British and we finally got what we wanted peace but instead of accepting peace what we did instead was start fighting among ourselves we decided for reasons that I don't understand that are not fully understandable for reasons that are even ah critical right that maybe sounded good but don't actually make sense we decided we didn't want to be friends anymore we decided we're better than them or they think we're better than us right just like calm talking about Mozart right and how he's a he is a deep thinker trying to leave a legacy unlike this Dullard but he doesn't even know what year Mozart lived to use uh shaban's words all you men are dull but instead they're fighting with each other for reasons that they don't even fully understand they've decided they are no longer friends they are no longer Brothers and their stubbornness has caused escalations between two groups who once were Unified in a place that had the potential to be idyllic where the groups that won ended up destroying themselves and each other committing the ultimate sin first of self-mutilation and then of murder calm claims that all of this was just because he wanted to create a beautiful song he wanted to create beautiful music that would be his legacy but Park's sister Siobhan calls him out on it it's going to be really hard to do that with no fingers and calm says yeah now we're getting somewhere the battle is false the claim of what he wants is false even though he believes it that really underlying all of this this is a story about despair this is a story about despair you see there used to be a Banshee screaming it was called the English and the characters were United against the Banshee Protestant and Catholic they were Irish and they were friends and they might have been oddly matched but they could have a drink together and sadly the Banshee is not gone the banshee just like Mrs Hutchinson the Banshee just like the creepy old lady Mrs McCormick or just like the Banshee that calm talks about in his song the banshee is not screaming anymore the Banshee is just watching watching the people that it wants oppressed turn on each other instead and where is that turn come from it's coming from despair it's coming from a series of actions that nobody totally even recollects how it happened a bunch of accidents that have cost both sides things that matter to them and this is rooted in history too in fact one of the things that happened in the Civil War was the burning of houses between the factions so even this is drawn as an allegory from the actual events of the Civil War this is about how these two sides that used to be together oddly match friends turned on each other and lost their opportunity for peace ended up destroying both their own dreams and their dreams of each other and ended up instilling such a hatred that even though there's a part of them that still knows their one people and they love each other even though there can still be these moments of beauty just like we have between calm and parekh that have cost both sides so much that hands cannot be shaken and peace cannot be made and the story of that despair is captured in two truly brilliant scenes um and both of them are played for comedy and they're both confessions to the priest so the first happens we the we see the priest come to land we get the sense that he's a priest who travels from place to place to place um doing a service here and a service there and after the service parekh Whispers in the priest's ear because he wants his help he wants calm to be his friend again and calm steps into the confession box and this is the scene that transpires forgive me Father for I have sinned its age week since my last confession I think just the usual I suppose father the drinking and the impure thoughts and a bit of Pride I suppose although I never really saw that as a sin butcher I'm here now and how's their despair not so much of a revlate thanks be you see calm thinks by cutting out his friend he has cut out the despair he is now going to live this idyllic life of music he just doesn't want to tango anymore to use his words from later in the movie but there are two sides in this country and it's impossible not to tango the priest asks him why aren't you talking to Patrick Sullivan no more and calm causes Bluff that wouldn't be a sin now would it father the priest says it wouldn't be a sin no but it's not very nice either who told you it's an island called a word gets around also paragos mean to upload in a word like I see so it isn't any of the impure thoughts about it you're joking me I mean are you joking me people do have some pure thoughts about mental do you have impure thoughts about man father I do not have impure thoughts about men and how dare you say that about a man of the class while you started it well you can get out of my confessional right now so you can and I'm not forgiving you any of these things until the next time so I'm not but I better not be dying in the meantime than a father I'll be pure you want to be pure so we have this wonderful wonderful scene right that ends with comedy so that we don't feel like Martin's Upon Us soapbox telling us what to think right that drops in this simple idea what about the despair that points towards the truth that calm doesn't want to look at in the same way that Siobhan will Point towards the truth when she says it's going to be really hard to to make music with no fingers in the same way that calm talks speaks to the truth when he really talks about the banshees and talks about his own fear and turns that on Shabana and says you feel the same way and she says no you don't don't and yes I know you do right so that problem of Despair but then it gets buried in this wonderful scene where the priest is just being hypocritical right yeah there's you know people have impure thoughts about men how dare you say I'm pure thoughts about men right this could I want to root this back when you're writing an important movie an important movie when you're writing a scene that's supposed to do something for you remember you're also writing a drama when you're writing a comedy remember you're also writing a drama and drama begins with characters who want something and make specific choices that other characters wouldn't make the specificity of the character of the priest is what allows this scene to breathe and not feel heavy-handed we're seeing a priest we've never seen before the wonderful hypocrisy of the priest who wants to open his arms to his brother who may be having impure thoughts about men but how dare you suggest that I have impure thoughts about men is gonna send the guy to hell if necessary for even implying it right that hypocrisy it's a dominant trait of character that makes him super compelling it's also connected to the hypocrisy of all of these characters right in fact the only character who's not showing hypocrisy is Shaban who needs to leave the place she loves because it's become intolerable we then get another fabulous scene with the priest on the other side of this script at this point calm has cut off all of his fingers the donkey is dead and his former best friend has just promised to show up at 2PM and burn down his house and he shows up again for confession well all the ones from last time you didn't forgive me for multiple multiplied by two of course column says definitely Pride this time so you can see in the previous scene right maybe some pride although I never saw it as a sin now definitely Pride this time and I want to compare that and you start to realize okay so this is about Despair and pride and you start to realize what Mark McDonald is really doing is he's pointing the finger at both sides right he's going it's the pride and the hypocrisy and the despair of both sides that has led to this horrible Civil War and 100 Years of troubles afterwards to forgetting that you're friends to getting the two sides mixed up where you can't even tell who's who anymore or why it all started it's Pride it's this thing that doesn't seem like a sin it's calms Pride that he is a wise musician leaving a legacy but it's also Park's Pride that no he's not the dull one that there's got to be someone dimmer than him that he can't have lost his friend that they can't have been an odd parent he his desire not to fall down the social stat the social ladder they both have pride and just in case it's not clear shabbon's going to send him a letter going hey come live with me there's a job for you here you have every opportunity to come to a place of peace and he's going to choose not to out of Pride even lying pretending he's there with the Donkey calm continues I kill the miniature donkey it's by accident but I do feel bad about it do you think God gives a damn about miniature donkeys come he doesn't I fear that's what it's all gone wrong this rhyme to me is devastating line but it also speaks to Martin mcdonough's deeper point we've forgotten this simple Little Thing Called Love we've forgotten about the things that actually connect us together and it speaks to his fear that maybe God doesn't care is that it that's what it is aren't you forgetting a couple of things no I think I've covered it wouldn't you say a punch in a policeman as a sin now we haven't covered this yet but why is he punched the policeman he's punched the policeman because even though he doesn't want to admit he still loves his friend and the policeman is given poor pot record a really hard time he feels guilty about the death of the donkey he wants to protect his friend it's just too late of punching a policeman is a sin we may as well just pack up and go and self-mutilation is a sin it's one of the biggest sells mutilation so you have me there multiplied by five and you can see that Martin mcdon's not just talking about cutting off his fingers he's talking about the metaphor of cutting off his fingers he's talking about how the Civil War and the troubles were actually an act of self-mutilation that cost both sides the Legacy they were trying to leave the peace the meaning the everything that they said that they wanted and that's why the priest follows that up with a mirror of the same line how's that despair it's back a bit but you're not gonna do anything about it I'm not gonna do anything about it no 12-hour Mary's and 11 our fathers and he's out but a moment later we're going to see how close he comes to doing something about it he's not going to do something himself he's going to sit in his house and let his friend burn him until finally he decides to leave we're gonna see a character who thinks he's just taking action against himself but actually starting a war we're going to see the way that what happens when you fall into despair and pride how a vision for peace can be destroyed and a war against a common enemy that would have led you to this mythical Island where everyone could get along can intent instead turn your home into a place you have to flee and just to get political for a moment because we're looking at a political movie I think we're at a similar place in our country where we have two sides doubling down on pride and despair and I think we're in a place where we're at a risk of bringing ourselves forgetting our love for each other even if we make odd friends um and bringing ourselves to a place where our country feels like a place we may have to flee and I think that's one of the reasons why the Banshees of inner Sharon is such a powerful film right now because it's not just about the Irish troubles it's about our troubles it's about human troubles and even though it's told in what seems like a really simple almost fairy tale form and even though it is dripped with comedy to make the medicine grow go down it's really a movie about Despair and pride and how those two simple ideas turn us against each other and destroy our opportunities for peace I hope that you enjoyed this podcast there is a full transcript on my website writeyourscreamplay.com podcast and if you're getting a lot out of it come study with me I have a free class every Thursday night online Thursday night rights and if you want to take your writing further we have an incredible program called protract that pairs you one-on-one with a professional writer who will meet with you every week or every other week read every page you write every draft you complete and be your Mentor throughout your entire career for a tiny fraction of what you would pay for a single semester at Film School in addition to that we have a whole slate of extraordinary screenwriting classes and TV writing classes so come check us out write your screenplay.com [Music]

Channel: Jacob Krueger Studio

Views: 1,687

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Id: elXuPPFkMuE

Length: 58min 17sec (3497 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 26 2023