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

What would you do in Padraic's shoes?

posted 2 years ago by Heisenberg (6730)
34 replies | jump to latest

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!

[–] SteveRes (508) 8 months ago

Colm was obviously having serious mental health issues. There's a reason the Priest kept bringing up his "despair"...

That said he handled the whole thing abysmally. If they lived in Dublin it wouldn't be so much of a problem, it's easy to avoid people in a city. But on a small island with only one pub and practically being next door neighbours his brutal approach would never work. The younger guy was right when he said "what is he, 12?" It was a childish way to go about it.

It would have been better if he explained to Pod that he needed a lot of space and alone time and maybe agree to meet up at the pub with him once a week to keep the damn peace.. and keep his fingers. But I feel he was on a mission of self destruction through despair. He didn't even try to stop Pod burning his house down.

[–] Heisenberg (6730) 4 months ago

Yes, I agree with your take.

But I have to say, even if Colm was having deep problems, I sympathize with Padraig even more.
Being his best friend he could have shown him the decency of a small compromise, like you mentioned to meet him once a week, or better: to let his friend help him somehow.
Even his ghosting could have been framed differently, as a way to help Colm for a moment, instead of what he does.

[–] SteveRes (508) 4 months ago

Oh absolutely. Neither of them are blameless. I mean burning his down is as extreme a reaction as you can get outside of murder. Both were flawed, troubled individuals. That's the sad thing about the film, it all could have been avoided if they'd just come to some amicable agreement that suited both sides.