Starring Colin Farrell

 If there was ever a movie for which eyebrows got Oscar nominations in the actor categories and then got signed for representation by CAA in Los Angeles, it's THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson. The title refers to the name of a music composition in the story.

"Why wouldn't he answer the door to me?" wonders a young man who lives on a remote island off the coast of Ireland. It's the kind of place where loneliness will definitely have a presence -- like a Catholic church and a pub.

The young man's longtime best friend is an older gent who plays the fiddle. When he's confronted by his young friend and asked why he didn't open the door, he responds "I just don't like you no more." The young man is taking aback by the comment. He's stunned. His eyebrows twitch,

I saw the movie last night. Weeks again, when I saw commercial for it on TV, I thought it would be a bit to  high-tone and stuffy for me even though I've been a Colin Farrell ever since I was greatly impressed by the Irish actor's performance in the Vietnam war drama, TIGERLAND. In that film, released in 2000, Farrell played a draftee who opposes the war and is an unruly Army recruit. I liked him even more in Spielberg's MINORITY REPORT with Tom Cruise. I wanted to like him as Alexander the Great in ALEXANDER, but with the blond hair and his slim, hairless torso, I just couldn't buy him as an Ancient Greek. Back in New York City, I lived right next door to a diner run by two Greek brothers from Mykonos. You could have hidden Easter eggs in their chest hair. It was that thick.

I didn't initially think I'd connect emotionally to THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN, but I did. Back in 2019, a close friend in New York City abruptly stopped talking to me around Thanksgiving time. I still don't know why. He'd helped me and I'd helped him through some hard times during the Recession when we were both job-hunting. For that reason, I was deeply concerned when I stopped hearing from him. The last message I sent asked if he was ok, if he had work and a roof over his head. I was worried. The humility of social media is that you can see when folks are keeping in touch and replying to people -- just not to you anymore.

For Colin Farrell's character, I felt his pain from the sudden, unexpected end of a friendship and I watched how his niceness was abused. In Brendan Gleeson's character, the older and sullen fiddler, we see how such a rude, quick withdrawal from a good friendship is like a form of self-mutilation. He, too, has active eyebrows.

The story takes place in 1923. The nice young man grows angry at the new loneliness that has fractured his life. The anger will force him to act in a not so nice way.

Among the Oscar nominations it received are for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Supporting Actor (Brendan Gleeson). I love how Irishmen Gleeson and Farrell, close friends in real life and previous co-stars, connect in their acting onscreen. Farrell's characters shows the need for male intimacy and openness in man-to-man friendships.

Colin Farrell is now a Best Actor Oscar nominee for this performance. He deserves the Oscar nomination. If he wins, he needs to include his eyebrows in his acceptance speech thank-you list.