The Oscar contender may be set in the Ireland of a century ago. But it offers a very modern lesson on how fragile male bonds can be, says Guardian columnist Tim Dowling
– now attracting awards like a magnet – is encapsulated in an early exchange between the two main characters: Colm abruptly ends his longstanding friendship with Pádraic, who, understandably, seeks an explanation.Although many of the codes of straight male friendship are unspoken, there are two obvious breaches of protocol here.
Men like to think that because our friendships are slow-growing, studded with barbs, and require little tending, they are durable, like a drought-resistant hedge. But in reality they’re terribly fragile; untended, they often simply shrivel up. They may seem flexible, but they’re not constructed to withstand much in the way of change.
It’s not, as you may have gathered, a terribly flattering portrayal of male friendship. Neither is the one in Dickins’ book, at first. The friends he re-established contact with always seemed to insist on social settings that gave the meeting an ulterior purpose – a sports bar, or some kind of activity – rendering direct communication unnecessary. In terms of conversation there was a predominant mode, what Dickins calls, “the jazz of casual brutality that men reserve for people they like”.
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