Padraic (Colin Farrell) has a farm with his sister Siobhan (Kerry Condon) on a little island off the coast of Ireland. Their days are repetitive. Siobhan cooks, tries keeping the house clean (despite Padraic letting his miniature donkey, Jenny, inside), and reads. Padraic takes the animals to the fields, delivers milk across the island to the general store for money, and goes to the pub at 2 p.m. with his best friend Colm (Brendan Gleeson.)
Except one day, Colm declares he's not friends with Padraic any more. At least, not the kind of friends who speak to one another, or spend any time together. He's been thinking of mortality, and what he'll leave behind to mark his time on Earth. He thinks it'll be music, but if he's to do that, he can't waste two hours at a time listening to Padraic describe what he found in his donkey's - sorry, it was his pony's - shits. When Padraic fails to take the hint, continually trying to resume their friendship as though nothing changed, Colm ups the stakes. The next time Padraic speaks to him, Colm will cut off one of his own fingers. Fingers are kind of important for fiddle players.
Padraic can't figure out what's happening, Colm can't seem to explain it in a way Padraic will understand sufficiently to leave him alone, and Siobhan's being worn thin trying to protect her brother from his own faults.
The thing that keeps coming up in this movie is "nice." When Padraic asks people if he's dim, or boring, they tell him he's not, but they don't say he's smart, or interesting. They say he's "nice." And nice is, seemingly, never saying what you actually think or feel, at least not in front of the person you're thinking or feeling about. The shopkeeper - a noxious little gossip - wants to hear news from the far side of the island, but when Padraic, irritated by the local cop poking fun at him, spills the cop beat his son with a kettle in front of said cap, she dismisses that as 'shite news.' She'd beat Dominic (Barry Keoghan) herself, if he were her child! No doubt as soon as both Padraic and the goon of a cop were out the door, she was making a note to press the next customer for more details.
There's an elderly woman, Mrs. McCormack, who, with her pale, wrinkled skin and dark robes, makes me think Emperor Palpatine's on the loose. She roams the island, observing and making ominous comments. When she tells Padraic there will be a death on the island before month's end, possibly two, and she'll pray it isn't him or his sister, Padraic can only stammer out how that wasn't a nice thing to say. Her reply, 'I wasn't trying to be nice. I was trying to be accurate.'
Nice is a lie. Nice is a bland smile that hides contempt or hatred or pity. It's something confused with kindness, but it's probably more about the person being nice, than who they're being nice to.
When Padraic gets drunk at the pub one night and lets Colm have it for hanging out with a cop who beats and sexually abuses his kid, his finishing insult is that maybe Colm was never nice to begin with. Because to him, that's a horrible thing to be, not-nice. And Colm,who had his own spiel about how no one remembers people for being nice, they remember them for creating things of lasting beauty, like music, remarks that was the most interesting Padraic had ever been. When he was drunk and pissed and said what was on his mind without worrying if anyone would disapprove of him airing the cop's dirty laundry right in front of the entire village.
Padraic's an interesting character, in that I don't know what to feel about him, exactly. In some ways, he's completely guileless. A terrible liar, clumsy in his attempts to jab back at people who hurt him, and ultimately extremely self-centered. When Siobhan tells him she accepted a position as librarian on the mainland, his first two questions are, "But what about me?", and "Who's going to do the cooking?" And maybe that's a consequence of his sister looking after him all these years, shielding him, or maybe he just can't really think in larger terms.
There's something, in how literal Padraic is about everything, how he tends to focus on particular points of fact while ignoring the larger meaning, that makes me wonder if, had the movie taken place in the present day, he'd be diagnosed with some level of autism. When Siobhan responds to the question about cooking by asking if that's his first question, he points out his first question was, "But what about me?" Being technically correct, while missing the point she's trying to make, that he's not thinking at all about her. When Colm, trying to make his point about what lasts in memory, says everyone's heard of Mozart, Padraic immediately rebuts that he hasn't heard of him. Correcting Colm that he was discussing his pony's shit, not his donkey's, while not addressing Colm's larger point that it was not a meaningful conversation or what Colm considered a good use of his limited time on Earth.
It doesn't feel like an attempt to derail the conversation so much as Padraic's mind just seizes on these minor inaccuracies. Those he can actually address, so he does. Maybe in his mind, since that point was wrong, the whole argument is pointless or misguided? It really highlights the foolishness of Colm's threat, even beyond that he's gone well past "cut off your nose to spite your face." Padraic is never going to understand what Colm is trying to tell him by lopping off fingers. He's going to see it as his friend is sad, or mental. Try to get the priest to help him with his "despair. So they can go back to being pals and drinking at the pub together every afternoon.
I would say Farrell gives Padraic the energy of a yappy puppy that follows you around, begging for attention, chewing on her pant cuffs and pissing on the carpet, then looking hurt when you scold it. But even Colm's dog figures out what's what, at one point actively trying to drag the shears out the door and away from its master. But Farrell does this sort of befuddled, wounded expression so well, that I can feel bad for him not being able to understand, while simultaneously wanting to tear my hair out each time he tries once again to renew his friendship with Colm.
Gleeson wears a pinched, weary air whenever he's dealing with Padraic. The lines on his face get deeper, and he seems to grow pale, like interacting with Padraic drains the life from him. Or maybe that's just the blood loss. With other people he laughs, or listens attentively, leaned towards them and looking ruddy and healthy. Even if what they're saying is horrible, like the cop being excited to travel to the mainland as extra security for some executions tomorrow. Which side is doing the executions doesn't matter. Pity they're shooting them instead of hanging, but he'll see some people die and get paid for the privilege, what fun. And Colm listens, makes comments. He may think it's awful, but I guess the conversation is real, says something about people. This other man's indifference to cruelty, his gleeful avarice, is worth Colm's time in a way Padraic's chatter about shit is not.
Yet, part of him still cares for Padraic. Picks him up when the cop slugs him and loads him in the wagon, later punches the cop for behaving like a dick towards Padraic. He doesn't like hurting Padraic - who likes kicking a puppy? - but apparently the notion of picking up and leaving, going somewhere far away, like Siobhan ultimately does, where Padraic would never find him, doesn't track. Better instead to lop off fingers - and never bandage them, seriously, at no point does he appear to receive any treatment, big ups to that band playing his song while Colm presses a hand full of stumps to his chest and conducts with a bloody fiddle - in the futile attempt to drive the man away.
Maybe the saddest parts are Padraic's interactions with Siobhan. Because Condon makes you see that Siobhan loves her brother (and Padraic does love her, as best he can) but has spent her entire life accommodating his quirks, and his schedule. Fighting a losing battle to not let the donkey in the house. Read a book that's sad, and be asked what it's about, or at least why she reads it if it's sad, be told she should read a book that's not-sad. And even though I don't think she particularly gives a shit about Colm - she dismisses him as just like all the other men on the island, tied up in petty grievances, and corrects him on when Mozart lived - she tries to keep Padraic away so Colm doesn't further mutilate himself.
(The Mozart thing I think is a rebuke of Colm's point. People remember Mozart's music, but they don't necessarily remember the man. Whereas, at least on the island, people might remember Padraic as the nicest person. Or, they would have, at one time.)
But because Siobhan calls the shopkeeper out on being a nosy ass that opens people's mail then lies about it, or tells the cop it's none of his business what she does, she gets told nobody likes her. Because she's not nice. She reserved that for her brother, holding back her frustration with his satisfaction with the monotonous rhythms of their life, and it's eating away at her. One of the hardest scenes was after the cop told her that, when she's crying in bed. Padraic hears her, starts to sit up in his bed, then rolls away. Either he doesn't know what to say, or can't bring himself to try. He's probably never felt like he had to. Can't fault her for getting the hell out of there.
Most of the movie, Condon's hair is a stringy mess trailing around her head like a bush that's not been trimmed in years. It's only when she's decided to accept the job that the bags disappear from under her eyes, she starts to smile, works her hair into something neat. She's getting out, chasing what she wants and it brings her to life. In that sense, Padraic's letter back to her, while maintaining his usual self-centered niceness, is a gift. He doesn't tell her Jenny died. He doesn't tell her he burned down Colm's house, possibly Colm with it.
He does tell her Dominic died - and I can at least hope Dominic's shitbag father drank himself to death soon after - but only as a way of explaining why he can't come live with her, because Dominic is no longer an option to take over the farm. By keeping everything raging inside him locked away from someone who would care, who would probably come rushing back to try and keep her brother from getting killed, he grants her the peace to keep living the life she wants.
One thing that feels significant in a way I can't place comes during the final conversation between Colm and Padraic. All through the movie, characters use the word "feckin'." Feckin' mental, feckin' shitbag, and so on. In this final conversation, in response to Colm's apology for Jenny's death, Padraic says, very clearly, "I don't fucking care." The shift in word choice or pronunciation feels important, but I'm not sure how. The whole conversation does mark the shift in the landscape between the two. Colm seems ready to put things behind them, Padraic is not. They're both still alive, so nothing is over. Colm looks across the sea to Ireland and remarks there's been no shooting for a couple of days (this takes place at the tail end of the Irish Civil War in the 1920s), and maybe there'll be peace.
Padraic dismisses the idea. Doesn't nod along mindlessly or agree. They'll be back to fighting soon enough. A metaphor for he and Colm. This quiet conversation doesn't change things, even if part of Padraic still wishes it would. The way he nearly breaks when Colm thanks him for looking after his dog, like he can't tell if he wants to cry or throw up. I wonder if, in that moment, he was about to ask Colm if he wanted to go to the pub, and had to stop himself. Like he's learned a lesson, or this is the "new me" as he yelled at Dominic's back at one point, but the old him isn't entirely gone yet. Instead, he responds "Any time," and walks away. It's outwardly polite towards a person he hates, but it's also a threat. He could come looking to settle things with Colm at any time.
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