"The Wind That Shakes the Barley" (Ken Loach)
Finally released in the U.S., over a year since it was released in Ireland and Europe (June, 2006), and since I was intrigued by its subject matter.
As political tensions brew in early 1920s Ireland, brothers Damien and Teddy (Cillian Murphy and Padraic Delaney) abandon their civilian lives and take up arms to liberate their country from the oppressive "Black and Tan" squads of Britain. Winner of the Palme d'Or at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, Ken Loach's provocative drama, co-starring Liam Cunningham, examines a microcosm of civil war in Cork, Ireland.[From Netflix: The Wind That Shakes the Barley]
Slightly meandering, yet eminently watchable. I'm sure the film was not too popular in London, the British in the film are extremely brutal to the Republican Irish, and to the Irish in general. Also yet another film that cannot help but be viewed through the desert dust of the current occupation in Iraq; torture as a tool for extracting information (and teeth and fingernails) is no modern invention, though the information thus elicited always has a questionable rate of accuracy.
Socialism is a distinct thread of the movie, celebrating the power of the trade unions for instance (train conductors union refusal to transport English soldiers or arms, even under duress). There is not much romanticism, no unbelievable optimism, no comic book heroes, in other words, and no sentimentality in regards to the spiraling violence and counter-violence.
The landscape is so compellingly beautiful (and so green, natch), richly filmed.
Irish history is not quite my history, not something I feel intuitively in my bones from half-remembered tales, recited in rhythm by my grandparents over a steaming plate of potatoes. I do have some ancestors (allegedly) from the County Cork however, and there is most certainly a strand or two of Celtic fringe double-knotted in my body's cells. More precisely, The Wind That Shakes the Barley is a filmic history of oppression, and I always root for the oppressed.
