Barry Keoghan Won't Win At The 2023 Oscars, But He'll Win In Our Hearts
There usually are snubs to contend with once the Academy Awards nominations drop every January. That eventuality, we're prepared for. But sometimes a really great nomination catches us off-guard; we're ready for the Academy to let us down, after all, but rarely ready for them to delight us. They've got a history. In this year's nominees crop, though, there was one name that did surprise me, though the performance is wholly deserving: Barry Keoghan for "The Banshees of Inisherin."
You see, the Best Supporting Actor category is stacked. Alongside Keoghan — who is celebrating his first Oscar nomination — we have "Causeway" star Brian Tyreese Henry (another pleasant surprise), "The Fabelmans" star Judd Hirsch, Keoghan's "Banshees of Inisherin" costar Brendan Gleeson, and the incredible "Everything Everywhere All At Once" star Ke Huy Quan. There's no denying the quality of the category this year — and further still, it's very likely that Quan is going to end the night with his very first Oscar. Not convinced? Well, his campaign thus far — a completely organic one, at that, that has been completely fueled by his sincere excitement to be back in the game — has been extremely successful. If he doesn't win, it'll be potentially the biggest snub in Oscars history.
Stunning character work
But for now, we can revel in Barry Keoghan's triumph, knowing that no matter the outcome, he deserved to be there. "The Banshees of Inisherin" is, on the whole, a stunning and surprising dark comedy about the inability to completely shut certain people out of our lives. Keoghan's inclusion in the story as someone the town tries hard to shut out because of his wiley and oblivious ways is one of the best examples of stunning character work in recent memory, simply for the way Keoghan crafts the persona of Dominic Kearney through gestures, facial ticks, and altered physicality. But there's more to Dominic than just being a sounding board for other characters, something he does for both Colin Farrell's Padraic and his sister, Siobhan, played by Kerry Condon (also nominated in the supporting category).
Keoghan's standout scene in the film is a breathtaking moment with Condon's Siobhan, where they stand on the edge of a lake in Inisherin, and Dominic finally, it seems, gets the courage to ask Siobhan, "You probably would never want to fall in love with a boy like me, would ya?" Condon's physical response is one of utter heartbreak, knowing that what he's asking in his own strange way is, at its core, Dominic's only hope. She lets him down as easily as she can, but his deflection is even more crushing. "No, yeah, no. I was thinking no," he agrees with her, masking all the feelings bubbling to the surface. "Not even in the future, like when I'm your age?" Keoghan's character tries one more time, but he can't stick the landing. It was never his trick to begin with. "Yeah, no, I didn't think so. I thought I'd ask in the off chance," he adds, his facial ticks on overdrive with the rejection.
Dashed where there was once hope
Silence overtakes Dominic then as the character's awkwardness gets the better of him — he's unable to figure out what to do with himself in the face of love, now dashed where there was once some small hope. He fidgets and ticks, as if to let the reality settle inside him before he says, staring with glassy eyes not at Siobhan but through her, "Well, there goes that dream."
Barry Keoghan's work in this film hinges on this scene, the scene that gives his sidekick-slash-funny-supporting-weirdo depth and humanity. The scene that, so to speak, makes him three-dimensional. Even before that final tragic line, Keoghan embodies the sides of Dominic that make him a good friend of the pub drunks and a well-meaning yet silly town dunce. But those people have feelings too, don't they? We get to see one small yet majorly effective moment that shows us they do — and that their particular kind of loneliness is a product of habitual rejection. But at the same time, it's the kind of loneliness most of us have felt at one time or another in our lives. As such, it becomes impossible to not be affected by his work in this film, because he's shining a mirror on us all. Keoghan's performance reminds us that life has and will let us down, no matter the dreams we dream, with a line so devastating it got him this nomination. And you know what? Good for him.
"The Banshees of Inisherin" is currently available to stream in the United States via HBO Max.