2022/2023 is really an amazing awards season for Irish films. Banshees is one of the big players, even if it probably won't win Best Picture, there is an Irish film in the foreign-language category and then, last but not least, we have this short film here that runs for over 20 minutes and is a co-production between Ireland and the UK, but I felt the Irish component here is much stronger with the characters and also their thick Irish accents, even if the language spoken is English. I really could have needed subtitles though for a lot of it. Not gonna lie I had a hard time here occasionally to understand what the two protagonists were saying and my English is excellent otherwise, but still it was the language barrier most of all and not the fact that one of the two was disabled. The cast is fairly small in general here. Imdb lists four players only and strangely enough the two protagonists in third and fourth spot. The reason is probably that they just took the alphabetical road there and with this approach the first one is Michelle Fairley who is of course a really big name and especially Game of Thrones viewers will identify her right away. Paddy Jenkins is also far from a rookie and has starred in other Ireland-themed films before. And then there is James Martin and Seamus O'Hara who are the two stars here, but whose careers do not come remotely close to the other two just mentioned. Still pretty awesome that Fairley and Jenkins star in a short film like this. The genre can need it.
High time to mention the two people who made this film and this would be Tom Berkeley and Ross White. Both have not been for super long in the industry, but quite interesting bodies of work. One has even voiced Prince Harry in a previous project and this is also not the first collaboration between Berkeley and White. The fact that the film scored so many awards nominations will surely help that the duo will work together on future projects. The fact that their work here won a double-digit quantity of awards and was nominated for another double-digit amount is a key reason why people consider this film the frontrunner. Or bookies do at least from what I have read today. I am still not sure if this is going to win. I feel like they'd rather have an American short win or, in the absence of such, they could go for the one from Luxembourg. We will see soon enough. I personally would say that this is just my third or fourth favorite from the bunch of nominees. From my rating, you can see, however, that I enjoyed the watch for the most part and give the overall outcome a thumbs-up and positive recommendation. It is worth checking out and to me the film's biggest strength is that it gets better the longer it goes. Took me quite a bit though to really get into the story here, also because of the aforementioned language barrier.
On a few occasions, I had a hard time to understand 100% what was going on. I got it that the list was actually made by the disabled brother and not their deceased mother. This is a big twist and revelation at the end, but then I was confused why we still hear the voice-over from her towards the end as if she keeps reading inclusions from this really long to-do-list. It was still nice that the disabled brother just wanted to finally spend some more time with his other brother and not only because the mother wanted the two to get closer again. In the end, the big challenge of one trying to convince the other to stay on the farm was handled in a realistic way. He does not reject the idea as much as he did earlier, but he also will not all of a sudden say yes in an unrealistically exaggerated happy-ending approach. All good there. Well, the fart humor was one thing between the two. It was tolerable too I guess, but not fully to my liking. It is a short film worth seeing, but once is really enough and the big screen also not totally needed there. I am hoping that two other films win the Oscar on Sunday, but we will see how things go. With this one here, I have a bit of a feeling that this could be turned into a full-feature film at some point in the next five years and if such a project gets greenlit, then I would not be surprised at all. I am curious to see if they get the same two leads then for such a project. I feel like if it wins the Oscar, then a full-feature adaptation is almost guaranteed and, in this case, we could even see the story at some indoor stage theaters at some point. This is all speculation only though. Let's stay in the now. I give "An Irish Goodbye" a cautious thumbs-up.
High time to mention the two people who made this film and this would be Tom Berkeley and Ross White. Both have not been for super long in the industry, but quite interesting bodies of work. One has even voiced Prince Harry in a previous project and this is also not the first collaboration between Berkeley and White. The fact that the film scored so many awards nominations will surely help that the duo will work together on future projects. The fact that their work here won a double-digit quantity of awards and was nominated for another double-digit amount is a key reason why people consider this film the frontrunner. Or bookies do at least from what I have read today. I am still not sure if this is going to win. I feel like they'd rather have an American short win or, in the absence of such, they could go for the one from Luxembourg. We will see soon enough. I personally would say that this is just my third or fourth favorite from the bunch of nominees. From my rating, you can see, however, that I enjoyed the watch for the most part and give the overall outcome a thumbs-up and positive recommendation. It is worth checking out and to me the film's biggest strength is that it gets better the longer it goes. Took me quite a bit though to really get into the story here, also because of the aforementioned language barrier.
On a few occasions, I had a hard time to understand 100% what was going on. I got it that the list was actually made by the disabled brother and not their deceased mother. This is a big twist and revelation at the end, but then I was confused why we still hear the voice-over from her towards the end as if she keeps reading inclusions from this really long to-do-list. It was still nice that the disabled brother just wanted to finally spend some more time with his other brother and not only because the mother wanted the two to get closer again. In the end, the big challenge of one trying to convince the other to stay on the farm was handled in a realistic way. He does not reject the idea as much as he did earlier, but he also will not all of a sudden say yes in an unrealistically exaggerated happy-ending approach. All good there. Well, the fart humor was one thing between the two. It was tolerable too I guess, but not fully to my liking. It is a short film worth seeing, but once is really enough and the big screen also not totally needed there. I am hoping that two other films win the Oscar on Sunday, but we will see how things go. With this one here, I have a bit of a feeling that this could be turned into a full-feature film at some point in the next five years and if such a project gets greenlit, then I would not be surprised at all. I am curious to see if they get the same two leads then for such a project. I feel like if it wins the Oscar, then a full-feature adaptation is almost guaranteed and, in this case, we could even see the story at some indoor stage theaters at some point. This is all speculation only though. Let's stay in the now. I give "An Irish Goodbye" a cautious thumbs-up.