MovieChat Forums > The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) Discussion > What would you do in Padraic's shoes?

What would you do in Padraic's shoes?


Allegory aside.
Your best friend all of a sudden decides you are bad and ghosts you like this. You are bad now!
(Any reason is good. You just became stupid or boring or uncool or evil or whatever he decided)

What would you do?

I totally sympathized with Colin's character Padraic.
Colm was an uber dick, and mean and evil too.
He acted like a psycho, and I would just take it that I am better off without a piece of shit like him in my life. Feck him!

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I would just accept that he didn't want to be friends anymore and move on.

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I like your answer but easier said than done.
You sound so casual, like you have lots of superficial friendships.
They looked like best buddies, and clearly they lived in a confined environment and picked each other as best friend. It acted like a marriage.
If your spouse after years together out of the blue decided that he/she wants nothing to do with you, would you just accept that she didn't want to be with you anymore and move on?


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If the person acts like a crazy weirdo and cuts off body parts, I would accept that I was better off without them.

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Yes, ok.
But that happens AFTER he tells him to not talk to him anymore.
Wouldn't you just feel offended and puzzled and sad like Padraic?
I would also take it as a bad joke and be like "what the feck is your problem???"

And also, even the fingers, the way Colm puts it, he's blaming Padraic for it, as in "look what you made me do, this fingers are on you!"
That would also hurt me, rather than feel "it's your problem, glad you don't want me anymore".

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This is the only sane answrer move on, don't keep harassing the man

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Except the island is so boring with nothing to do and no one really worth interacting with what else is there to do? Who else is worth befriending. Why is there no social pressure on either of them. There were the bar mates who were aloof from this falling out, and there was the police who was incompetent and there was the church just as useless.

The movie made no sense. It is one of those movies that casts out a few symbols as bait and then waits for supercilious defenders to claim it is a great movie because it makes them seem perceptive and literate because they recognize the symbolism involved, though they can't see anything other than the specialness it affords them.

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Whitch is why only people who WANT to be alone should be living on such islands.

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Padraic was an absolute idiot, they clearly had a completely superficial friendship based on drinking together

Colm and padriac have nothing in common other than being drunks...

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Maybe…but it was a “superficial” relationship that probably lasted 30 years or more and included hanging out multiple times a week…so being cut off would be more difficult than you are making it out to be.

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A friendship is more than an aquantiance

Colm wss a drinking buddy nothing more

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Was it 30 years? So how old do you make Padraic to be, cuz I don't think he's supposed to be much over 40, if that. Colm is older, let the younger guy hang around. You're supposed to be tolerant of community members in such places, even though that favours the average more than the outliers. The outliers are supposed to change to make everything hunkydory. Colm decides he doesn't want to die in that state. Unfortunately, this conflict between dumb society and the individual suggests the individual will self-destruct, and the bloodthirsty psychopath, mainstream society, will again be in charge of lots of stupidity. In other words, it was pretty early on I had to start seeing them as archetypes of some sort, not actual people of any kind. But I've only seen it once, so far.

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Padraic is sometimes superficial and unschooled, often ignorant.
Colm is a bit more meditative and cultured.
They could still have a wonderful friendship.

And it sound like they did, before Colm turned too cool for school.
What an asshole, he showed who is the true ignorant of the couple.

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they have nothing in common.

Amd can oly tolerate each other while drunk

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They had tons in common.
They had similar taste, shared political ideas, has similar hobbies, age, life circumstances and liked each other. They also had some differences, which person in the real world does not?
Friendship is not really about agreeing on everything at all times. Quite the opposite.

Also, the movie made the point that Padraig was a nasty drunk and not pleasant to be around, so they really could NOT only tolerate each other while drunk.
It seems to me that you are forcing your own perspective on the movie when things are indeed shown differently.

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Golm repeately tells Padriac that he prefers him drunk throughout the film

Similar hobies? Padriac lies about reading as a better use of his time than harassing colm in his own home because he i s afraid to admit he is too dull to have a conversation about things other than pony shite.





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No, you bother him till he cuts off all the fingers on his left hand... then get him a power saw so he can do the other hand and start bothering him some more. Best to competely eliminate the ability of a nutter like Colm to pull a trigger.

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I don't think I would like to be forced to be "responsable" of his self harm.

Even if completely innocent, I still would prefer to not be near that sort of madness.

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Unless you held this hand and cut off the finger you wouldn't be responsible. We don't live in a village where we are responsible the idiots around us. Though sadly that type of madness is already everywhere you just don't notice it.

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Ok but this is a case of a madman saying "go away or I will do this".
Of course HE is the lone responsible.
But do you need to not go away?
Can't you just humor him and spare yourself the consequences of not going away?

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You could. But given he is a nut job that is unpredictable and could hurt other people, doing something that causes him to neuter his ability to hurt anyone is a good thing. Ignoring a nut job is just enabling them.

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Well, ok but it should be handled by a professional that knows what to do. Why do you think it's your duty to intervene?

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I wouldn’t talk to him. Rather, I would mail-order a fiddle from the mainland. After 3 or 4 months it would arrive. I would take it with me everywhere I went and play it incessantly whenever Colm was near. I wouldn’t look at him or talk to him. I’d just fiddle like a nutball with no fiddling skills whatsoever.
And if Colm ever approached me about it, I’d walk away from him and ask the barkeep to tell Colm that every time he speaks to me, I will fiddle next to his house at dawn, midday and twilight the following day.


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Ahahah, that is very creative and might be effective with a decent guy.

But I think an asshole like Colm would just feel his ego stroked, and use your parroting against you with the community (as a proof of why he is right).

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Damn, you can write the sequel to this thing - lol.

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When I was young, I was bad at reading signals. I cam remember a few instances where people didn't want to be friends, or hang out with me. I kept insisting until I finly got it, or someone said something hurtful. There was no dignity in it.

As an adult, I find it easy to just move on.. not al acquientances need to become friendships, not all friendships have to be ride or die.

In the case of Podriac, he truly didn't know why Colm did 't want to see him anymore. Then the reason turns out to be that he is simple-minded? It's beyond hurtylful.

The metaphor here doesn't rrally apply. They were friends bt dafault, then Colm wants to better himself, and since he can't blames Podriac's insistance for his failure.

How does hurting himself help him move on froma friendship he didn't like, and cut off anyway?

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I think hurting himself is just an aggression against Padraic.
Since Colm is not that evil to cut off Padraic's fingers to convince him to fuck off, he harms himself instead. Same purpose and action, same victim, different application.

But the friendship here goes beyond a mere misunderstanding.
I think they both truly felt that they liked being each other's best mate for years, until Colm did a 180 out of the blue.
HE has no dignity for me.

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I think this is a situation of people growing apart.

It happened to me with a really old friend. I put up with him for a long time and ignored his bs. Then we had a serious falling out and I didn’t even bother to reach out later.

The truth is, I should’ve ended the friendship sooner.

So, to answer your question, I would’ve just moved on.

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Ok, but you sound like in your experience you were Colm, not Padraic.
But I might be wrong.

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I can sympathize with Colm. Haven't we all had that one "friend" that annoyed us to no end? I mean, who talks about pony shit for 2 hours? No one would want to be around that, unless they're just as idiotic as the one spouting that nonsense.

Although, I can understand Pad's befuddlement. I don't think the movie ever makes it clear just how long these two have been hanging out together. But getting completely ghosted would be shocking if you've been friends with someone for a long time but they were just drinking buds. Pad should have handled it more maturely.

At any rate, I just saw this film for the first time and I found it to be pretty damn funny, although, I do like dark humor. It kind of reminds me of that movie The Lobster, another obscure comedy that has animals in it. I might have liked this movie a little more though, even though it's probably a more grim tale than TL. It just had a bigger payoff. The antics mixed in with the realism of the movie worked really well, while TL is more zany and farfetched, TBoI was more grounded and reminded me of real life situations I've also had to deal with.

It's a fine film in my view, I'll give it a 7.5 out of 10. However, its really not for the faint of heart, its dark in many ways.

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Yes, but that "friend" we've all had was NOT a friend.
Hence, it was always treated as such, with distance and never letting them think otherwise.
Or we would be at fault for lying to him.
One sure way to let somebody think otherwise is to spend lots of time together and drink with him every day, have him pick you up from your house to go to the pub together etc.
In that pub there were plenty of other patrons and cliques, if Colm felt that Padraic was so awful, he could have given him some hint before and spent his time away from him.

Anyway, I agree with you that the movie is funny, I liked this waaay better than The Lobster, and also had a decent and powerful allegory (hence its darkness).

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I certainly would've handled it in a different way than what Colm did. However, and this is a big however, Colm is not under any obligation to give Pad a reason why he wants to cease all communication with him.

In fact, sometimes it would make matters worse to tell someone why you no longer want to be friends, as demonstrated by the events that took place in the movie.

Sure, going to an extreme like what Colm did is a little nuts but some people really do get tired of associating with certain individuals. I know this to be true, I've been there, I've lived it.

The Lobster definitely has it's moments but it's so bizarre that it becomes difficult to understand. I really liked it though.

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