I was thinking more about The Banshees of Inishiren.

Does this need a spoiler alert? When I wrote my term paper in high school and read criticism of John Updike’s Rabbit Run, did the critics say spoiler alert? I guess that was before the internet.

Anyway there’s a scene where Colm is confessing to the priest. The priest sails in every Sunday. And Colm is clearly an atheist but still a Catholic. So he goes to confession every week. I think there are three confession scenes. Maybe two. Two of the scenes are pretty funny because in one him and the priest start yelling at each other and telling each other to get fucked and stuff like that. But the other one is the one I’m talking about.

Colm stops talking to Padraic which is the inciting event for the whole movie. Well I guess I don’t have to tell you how the plot goes if this is literary criticsim, right? I guess I have to read some literary criticism and stop just going off my memory about it.

Anyway Colm finds out Padraic’s donkey chokes to death and Padraic now wants to murder Colm because it was Colm’s fault to a degree and next thing you know the asshole policeman comes into the bar and starts to insult Padraic and his donkey and Colm punches him in the face. It’s a great scene but that’s also not the scene I was thinking about.

I was thinking about the scene with the confession and the priest says doesn’t Colm have anything else to confess about? And Colm says no and the priest says, “punching a police officer isn’t a sin?” And Colm says, “If punching a policeman is a sin, we might as well pack up and go home.”

I was going to say some more about what I thought about the movie or whatever but it has taken too much time and effort to get to this point. I guess I rather watch the movie with someone and then be like, “Did you see when he was saying punching a policeman is…that part? Ha that shit was awesome. So true.” And pretend we both understand what it means.