• Searchlight Pictures

The word "nice" generally feels flabby and ineffectual, but it's hard to overstate the thematic weight it carries in Martin McDonagh's hilarious, bleak, contemplative The Banshees of Inisherin. It's used to describe Pádraic (Colin Farrell), a simple farmer on the Irish island of Inisherin, and for some of his neighbors it's a compliment. But for Colm (Brendan Gleeson), who had been Pádraic's best friend and drinking buddy, it has become a problem. Without warning, Colm decides that Pádraic's simple niceness is a waste of whatever time Colm has left in this world, perhaps better spent composing music. In short, Colm is breaking up with Pádraic as a friend, beginning a spiral of physical and emotional destruction—all because "nice," for Colm, was no longer enough.

In both his theatrical and film work, McDonagh has spent 25 years tucking fascinating ideas into darkly comic tales, like fortune cookies spiked with arsenic. The Banshees of Inisherin might be the funniest comedy of the year, but it's also one of the most profoundly melancholy dramas, and a thoughtful morality play. With a risky connection of this story to the conflicts of its times, McDonagh takes a chance on asking if we ever understand the right things to value.

Much of that idea is built on the detail McDonagh crafts for Inisherin circa 1923. Every supporting character is distinctive—from the shopkeeper obsessed with knowing all the latest gossip, to the barfly whose entire dialogue consists of echoing the publican, to the mysterious widow Mrs. McCormick (Sheila Flitton) with a propensity for ominous prophecies—in this isolated community, but as parochial as it seems, it's also removed from the "Troubles" on the island of Ireland proper, which exist largely as distant cracks of gunfire and puffs of smoke. Yet for Pádraic's unmarried, educated sister Siobhán (Kerry Condon), it's still worth considering a job away from Inisherin, rather than accepting a marriage proposal Pádraic's young even-simpler pal Dominic (Barry Keoghan). Her rejection inspires not only one of the most brilliantly all-purpose escape-from-an-awkward-situation phrases ever uttered, but inspires further contemplation of what Colm and Siobhán are seeking when dull niceness feels insufficient.

It is astonishing, however, how much complexity Farrell manages to inject into Pádraic's particular brand of dull niceness. So much of the character is constructed on Pádraic's inability to wrap his head around the possibility that Colm actually means what he is saying, that he wants nothing further to do with Pádraic, ever; that kind of cruelty feels utterly alien. One of the most heartbreaking movie moments of the year involves Pádraic's facial expression when Colm finally comes clean about why he has been avoiding Pádraic, as Farrell captures a kind of crumpling of his self-worth. Gleeson is typically terrific himself in a role that calls for making extreme behavior seem logical, but Farrell does the kind of work that acting classes should be made of—not centered around some showy speech, but entirely inward-looking while playing a man who himself isn't particularly familiar with looking inward.

That disintegrating friendship at the core of The Banshees of Inisherin navigates through multiple metaphorical notions, and it's understandable if it feels like McDonagh has bitten off more subtext than he can chew. It's a portrait of how depression can be almost contagious, as the "despair" Colm's confessor asks about affects those close to him; it investigates how emotional pain can turn outward when you lack the skills to process it. And it's a meditation on people divided for reasons that prioritize an abstract philosophy over simple kindness, and all the damage that can do. Sectarian violence in Ireland is of course a thorny thicket, but McDonagh has never seemed timid about wading into them while wondering how hard it can be to find happiness in a cruel world.

The Banshees of Inisherin would probably be one of the year's best films even if it were nothing more than a showcase for McDonagh's way with words, and the indelible characters he creates in partnership with his actors. The real depth emerges, though, in moments like the response by Mrs. McCormick to a suggestion that one of her comments wasn't nice: "I wasn't trying to be nice; I was trying to be accurate." At a time when we're constantly being torn apart over whose concept of living in the world is accurate, it's startling to wonder about what it would mean to focus on a concept of living in the world that's nice.