Research Seminar - Spaces of Ruin in The Banshees of Inisherin

Spaces of Ruin in The Banshees of Inisherin

Presented by: Prof. Jason Jacobs and Dr Matthew Cipa

Date: Friday 13 October 2023
Time: 12-1pm
Location: Online via Zoom and in-person at the SCA Writer's Studio (Level 6, Michie Building)

Abstract

The figuring of friendship in cinema is a relatively unexplored area of study. While there are many movies that depict various kinds of human companionship far fewer take it up as a central theme. The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh, 2022), set in 1923 on a fictional Irish island, begins at the point when the friendship between Pádraic (Colin Farrell) and Colm (Brendan Gleeson) ends. We never see them as the friends that they once were; we witness, instead, the ruins of what is left behind. As a medium attuned to surfaces, cinema is optimally suited to the representation of the mysterious masks and theatrical peculiarities of human intersubjective relations. Our paper explores how such relations accrue aesthetic force in the film by attending to moments that articulate the consequence of estrangement.

Presenters

Matthew Cipa is lecturer in the School of Communication at the Queensland University of Technology. His monograph, Is Harpo Free? And Other Essays of the Metaphysical Screen is forthcoming with SUNY Press. Jason Jacobs’s latest book is Reluctant Sleuths, True Detectives, also with SUNY Press.

Jason Jacobs is Professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Queensland and author of the BFI TV Classics book on Deadwood, and Reluctant Sleuths, True Detectives in the SUNY press series, Horizons of Cinema.