[Note: I apologize for the late post as I watched the film two days before the Golden Globe Awards show. My only confident notion, having seen few of the nominated films, was that Colin Farrell would win Best Actor.]

THIS DRAMA IS HARD TO DESCRIBE; it’s been referred to as comedy, tragedy, dark, dark tragi-comedy; labels are risky: you might miss the film for the wrong reasons (you might also see it for the wrong reasons). But the greater risk is to miss the movie. It takes place in a tiny village on an island off the coast of Ireland.

The setting is probably 40 years ago, though without references within the film to hint at the era, it could have just as easily have been set twice as long ago. The fabric of life there is slowly woven. There is no technology —at all. There is intimacy with neighbors and animals and nature. There are just enough simple pleasures to satisfy human society; if there had been fewer, it would have been deserted, had there been more it would have approached utopia.

The movie features the trio that made In Bruge—which was alternately dark and funny and tragic. But this film from Martin McDonagh, while somber, features Colin Farrell in as fine a display of acting as you can watch, with Brendan Gleeson in masterful counterbalance. The cast was flawless, the cinematography superb, and Carter Burwell, a favorite of the Coen brothers – and of mine–did the score.

It’s a pearl of a film, but not all pearls are white.

WRH