Colm Doherty was clearly in a dark, dark place (end of life existential crisis + deep depression). The part that seemed off to me was that he was still as functional as he was, in terms of being able to interact with others at the pub (and even play music). In real life, he probably would have invented reasons NOT to go to the pub anymore and would have become even more isolated than he already was.

The part that I didn’t like about the movie was that Colm seemed to think that change would come for him if he could just slip loose from his friendship with “dull” Padraic. The reality is that he saw his whole life as dull and pointless, and thought that if he could maybe just change this one thing, other dominoes might fall in his favor as well, which is obviously not how life works. But if you think of it from the perspective of a “junkie” refusing to speak to his old drug dealer, with the drug being “dullness”, you can kind of see the method to his madness.

Personally, I think Colm wanted to kill himself long before the story began, but didn’t for religious reasons and/or wanted to remain alive to care for his dog. The fingers were that big “cry for help” prior to suicide.

In the end, it probably doesn’t matter, because I believe that the characters in the movie were all metaphors for the state of infighting in Ireland, so you could think of each character as representing a group of people within Ireland who couldn’t see eye-to-eye. Arguably, cutting off fingers and burning of houses might represent the loss of life and property in pursuit of (meaningless?) political and religious philosophies during a time of war in Ireland.