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International film awards are by no means a good film guide, and this applies as much to The Banshees of Inisherin<\/em> as to other films.<\/p>\n The story is set in 1923 on an offshore island in the West of Ireland \u2013 it was filmed in fact on Achill island and Inis M\u00f3r (Inishmore), the largest of the three Aran islands in Galway Bay. Non-Irish speaking readers should know that \u201cInisherin\u201d (Inis \u00c9ireann) means the island Ireland. This setting during the Irish Civil War is made clear early on \u2013 throughout the film occasional bombs go off on the mainland, and the local policeman is chuffed to have been asked to participate in some executions \u2013 he knows not for which side, nor does he care. In fact, no one on the island seems to be in the slightest bit interested in the war. Amazingly, it is not a topic of conversation, nobody is touched by it, no-one is involved, and there are no discussions about the Treaty terms, which had such a momentous impact on post-Independence Irish history. And all this on Island Ireland, or Inisherin.<\/p>\n One can only wonder why? Did Martin McDonagh not wish to offend any side? Might any partisanship have affected awards and gross profits? Might the film even have caused controversy in Ireland itself? We will never know, because it manages to steer clear of causing any possible offence by reflecting actual sensibilities during this time. Anybody who wishes to know what these sensibilities were needs to read Liam O\u2019Flaherty, not watch Martin McDonagh. Liam O\u2019Flaherty, native of Inis M\u00f3r, not only wrote about the Civil War on the mainland ( in The Sniper<\/em> and The Martyr<\/em>) but also refers to the way it affected people on the Aran islands in terms of their class position. And O\u2019Flaherty took part in the Civil War himself, on the Republican side. Ironically, the cottage in which P\u00e1draic S\u00failleabh\u00e1in (Colin Farrell) lives with his sister Siobh\u00e1n (the absence of \u00d3 and N\u00ed in their surname would trouble an Irish speaker), is set in Gort na gCapall, O\u2019Flaherty\u2019s home place.<\/p>\n But McDonagh clearly does not wish to go there. His reluctance to engage with this very obvious\u00a0 Irish issue is reflected, too, in the musical score. McDonagh\u2019s instructions to Carter Burwell for the score was not to use Irish music, as McDonagh \u201chated that \u2018diddle-de-dee\u2019 music\u201d. So instead, bewilderingly and jarringly out of place, the atmosphere is underscored musically by a mixture of Brahms\u2019 Lieder<\/em>, a Bulgarian piece at the start of the film, and Indonesian gamelan music. As Colm Doherty (Brendan Gleeson), one of the two main characters, is a fiddler, and this is central to the plot, there is also some Irish music. This features as part of the story \u2013 not the musical score which supports the atmosphere and emotional reinforcement of the film.<\/p>\n Apparently, the thinking was that these musical pieces from around the world and different cultures would increase the appeal to an international audience. The opposite is in fact the case. The more specific a story is, the greater its universal appeal. A story that tries to please everybody, simply rings hollow, and although Brahms\u2019 Lieder<\/em> are hauntingly beautiful, they don\u2019t fit the atmosphere on Inisherin. An a capella sean n\u00f3s (Irish old style) solo voice would simply have been more fitting. In addition and in parallel to this there is the unhappy absence of any kind of Irish language speech, song, signage indeed anything in the native language. Again, this is profoundly out of joint with the time, and the place, shown on screen.<\/p>\n