Grief can be a funny thing. The passage of time plays tricks, and memories often intrude on thoughts in unexpected ways. It’s not all sadness and melancholy, and it can sometimes wash over the soul as a cathartic release. Grief is complex and confounding, explored in such a way in John-Paul Davidson and Stephen Warbeck’s The Three Urns, an Irish road-trip movie starring Ciarán Hinds.
Hinds plays a man traversing the northern coastline of Ireland over a period of a few days, appearing to be on a sort of odyssey of his own making. Along the way, he is pursued by a mysterious and aloof French woman (Olga Kurylenko) and encounters all manner of diverse and eccentric characters; a hodgepodge of bewildering figures that you’re never really sure are actually there. Davidson and Warbeck have run this gauntlet before, both having directed a spiritual prequel to this movie, The Man in the Hat, in 2020, which also starred Hinds and a handful of the supporting cast.
A feature like The Three Urns is always taking a big swing when it’s not played as a straight comedy or drama, and for that, it is to be admired. Hinds’ soft-spoken lead coasts by on his considerable charm; you just wish he had been given more to do than jaunt from place to place on these chance collisions. Stephen Dillane, Lisa Dwan, Lalor Roddy and Sinead Cusack all crop up as whimsical Lynchian oddities to steer our protagonist on his way.
If there is much to enjoy in the picturesque cinematography and eclectic score, the story itself is let down by a disjointed structure and a narrative that really underserves the cast. It may be the case that the film is aiming for that more dreamlike quality to explore its themes, but it doesn’t bear out like this on screen. Hind’s character seems himself bewildered and at times exasperated with his chance encounters and you’re never really sure where the journey is leading or more crucially why. A late reveal had the potential to be a real gut punch, but it is sadly left unexplored, resigned to being another fleeting encounter in a film that needed more emotional focus.