Authenticity isn't something you find very often when it comes to Hollywood re-enactments, not the historical accuracy mind (hollywood can sometimes do a good enough job that end) but more the general feel of the era its representing. History instead gets a glossy sheen to its surface and it inevitably kills the gritty edge that the events no doubt had.

With Ken Loach's Wind that shakes the Barley you get the diametric opposite of the hollywood historical movie one that rolls around in the reality and events that occured far more convincingly then you might ever think possible as the British director gives us the best movie about the Irish war of Independence and its messy aftermath that you are ever likely to see.

Loach's expertise in this area has already been seen with his Spainish civil war movie Land and Freedom were he added a human touch to a historical event and brought the conflicts down to individual levels, and with Barley he weaves the same line.

The basic story follows Cillian Murphy's Damien, a man about to embark to London to start Medical studies who is completely dis-interested in the brewing conflict about to blow up between the Irish Republican Army a group fighting for Irish independence and the Black and Tans, a British government sanctioned group of hired thugs and criminals posted to Ireland in an attempt to quell the insurrectionist forces. Damien's views on the conflict change rapidly as he witnesses firsthand individual acts of violence from the Black and Tans and abandons his trip to London to join the resistance movement led locally by his brother Teddy (Padraic Delaney).

The brutality and cold reality of war is never avoided in this movie as Loach shows gurrilla war for what it is, a dirty cruel business that should never be glamourised. The men fighting the Tans carry out their tasks without any hint of glee or enjoyment they do it becuase of what they believe in, no more then that and as the film progresses we are shown the increasingly cruel methods they must resort to. One such scene involves Murphy's Damien being forced to execute men who have been branded collaborators/spies even thou one of the men is a person he has known his whole life. Its a deeply powerful sequence as Murphy takes on the responsibilty of the task all by himself including the aftermath when he must tell the mother of the exectuted man what he has done and deliver the farewell letter he has written. The exectution spot on a windswept piece of Bogland in the depth's of rural Cork only heighten the cold yet nessesary reality of the act.

Loach's use of local actors also adds to the authentic edge the movie possesse's as you hear the unmistakably musical Cork accents in every voice, for a lot of non Irish viewers some of the accents may prove to be rather difficult to understand but Loach should be commended for not dulling down this area of the movie. The local actors also add pogiency to scenes like the burning of one of the fighters houses where an old woman who has lived there her whole life wanders around in the aftermath clearly unable/refusing to conprehend what has happened and just mutters about moving back into the burnt husk as if nothing has happened.

Loach is well known as a man with Socialist leanings and it shows in some of the the scenes where the freedom fighters having finally won independence squabble over which path the newly independent nation should take. However he wisely balances out the voices calling for a socialistic republic which those that argue for a more freemarket based economy, these dilemma's were real issues in Ireland for many years and Loach captures the years of debate on the subject in a few perfectly managed scenes.

The last 3rd of the movie shifts from the Independence struggle to the messy tragedy of the Irish civil War and its polorising effect on large sections of Irish society for many years to come, its own personal pitting of the brothers Teddy and Damien boiling the senseless waste of the infighting to a fight between brothers with tragic end results. In pure pacing terms the move from the independence struggle to the aftermath can seen a bit jarring but its an essential part of the full story.

Its a movie that reminds me in vivid terms of the stories my late grandmother and grandfather used to tell me of the time and its corrolation to what happened is a testament to Loach's commitment to realism and truth.

Not a movie to watch for enjoyment but more for education, it richly deserved its Cannes win.

A

All the foreign film afficidado's on the site and yet not one has seen this Cannes winner yet.

I'm depressed.

One-sided? Not truthful? I do not know.

But it tells a powerful story and it does everything a good film should be capable of doing. Brilliant film, one of the best I've seen this year.

'I tried not to get into this war and did, now I try to get out, and can't.'

A

A film that is oddly paced. It feels like the movie starts in the middle, and ends in the middle. There is no denying the power of that ending, though. I sobbed. I sobbed buckets of tears from my eyes.

***1/2

3.5/5

Very brutal, authentic, and well-shot Irish docudrama. Pretty informative as well, I can admit I knew next to nothing about the time period coming in.

It definitley always feel real. No theatrics or dramatization. Just cold realism. I had some issues with the first 40 minutes or so of the film, but as the faces grew on me the film did as well. The language was tough at moments, my dvd came with no english subtitles, but I generally got the gist of it all in.

It's not a film I'll be rewatching anytime soon, but I'm glad I gave it a shot.

Yay!

Hope you like it Loyal.

As long as he can translate the gibberish the characters speak.

Mocking a lyrical Cork accent, for shame Squee!!

B


Despite his long and colorful career The Wind That Shakes the Barley is only the second effort of Ken Loach that I looked into. The topic of the IRA, its foundation and its existence is very interesting and, in my opinion, also a very important one to depict and look into. Despite several films on the matter, none that I have seen so far really managed to capture everything about the conflict that led to the founding of the IRA, to its later split and the tragedies it caused. The Wind That Shakes the Barley is a noble attempt at going into depth on the matter, but it fails at conveying all the aspects of the issue. Maybe that would be simply too grand and too epic of an undertaking to ever achieve, who knows? In any case, I have yet to see the "ultimate" IRA movie.

As it is, The Wind That Shakes the Barley tells an intimate story of two brothers (Padraic Delaney and Cillian Murphy) who grew up in British-occupied Ireland and whose lives are greatly affected by the fight for independence of their country. Now having read the simple premise for the film, I pretty much knew where this film would be heading eventually. That doesn't quite undermine its impact when the expected situation arrives anyway. It's a deeply sad, tragic and never-compromising story on how ideals and belief can tear even loving brothers apart.

However, the film's most moving scene is probably when Damien has to shoot Chris Riley, the so-called traitor. It's simply painful to watch as you don't just feel for Chris, but also for Damien who loses his innocence and part of his soul in this scene. Almost equally affecting is the final scene with Sinead and Teddy, but I don't want to spoil too much. Ken Loach's technical approach on this is more tradition than usual. His mise-en-scene doesn't include as much natural lighting as usual and there's not a lot of intradiegetic music. The dialogues also don't seem improvised as it is the case in large parts of most of his films. However, this mesh between his usual style and the more mainstream style fits the movie well. The actors (who have been given their pages of the screenplay the same day as they shot the according scenes) do their jobs pretty well. Cillian Murphy is as reliable as usual, but it's Liam Cunningham who stands out the most in the picture.

Despite many positive things that can be said about the film, I am still not very enamored with it. It is a well-made picture, but I wished for a bigger scope, giving us a more thoughtful view on the conflict and what followed the split after the treaty. I suppose it wasn't the film's main goal to present us that. Nevertheless, I also have another major point of criticism on the film. I realize that the British weren't exactly very well-meaning and nice to the Irish back then. However, I think their portrayal in the film is from an almost militant view. I am not a big fan of black-and-white portrayal in films and while I wouldn't say that the IRA was in any way glorified in the film, the portrayal of the British was very much one-dimensional and typical of a standard villain. From someone like Loach, I expected a more balanced portrayal than just reducing the Brits to torture-loving assholes.

The Wind That Shakes the Barley is an ambitious, but ultimately flawed film. It's worth seeing for some of its great scenes and the superb performances by the cast, but it's not the best IRA-themed film you'll ever see.

Without any doubt the most powerful scene of the movie.