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Their Country Right or Wrong
Scotland On Sunday
19 June 2006
The Wind That Shakes the Barley (15)
Sometimes the best way to address the present is by confronting the past.
Ken Loach's Palme d'Or winner The Wind That Shakes the Barley is ostensibly about the radicalisation of young men in 1920s Ireland. However, it also has a wider resonance for any country in which occupation has provoked resentment and rebellion.
Loach's opposition to the invasion of Iraq is well known, and it doesn't take a great leap of the imagination to seek the parallels between his film and Iraq, Palestine, or many other headline-grabbing conflicts. One of the movie's observations is of the way that naked aggression pushes reasonable men towards unreasonable actions.
The hero of the period drama, which is told with typical verve and commitment by Loach's frequent collaborator, Scots screenwriter Paul Laverty, is Damien (Cillian Murphy). An idealistic young man who has studied to become a doctor, Damien is on the brink of leaving Ireland to start a new life in London. The opening scenes possess a vice-like grip as British troops disrupt a hurling match that violates the ban on all public meetings. There is no compassion in their hearts. In the heat of the moment a 17-year-old boy is beaten to death. It is not the time for good men to abandon their country, and so Damien chooses to stay and fight the British, a decision that warms the heart of his defiant brother Teddy (Padraic [sic] Delaney).
There is nothing too subtle about the opening scenes of The Wind That Shakes the Barley, and the film itself is crudely drawn, but there is a visceral sense of anger that drives the entire drama. Throughout the events, the British Black and Tans are depicted as monsters. They have power but no responsibility as they set about terrorising, bullying, and abusing the local population.
They are drawn with all the vicious glee of propaganda cartoons in a time of war. They embody unthinking evil in a manner similar to the vicious 'Hun' of the First World War.
Damien in this context is almost akin to a James Stewart hero in a classic western. Cillian Murphy is a delicate, diminutive figure. He exudes a doe-eyed sensitivity that is central to our emotional involvement in the character's development. He is not a macho figure itching for a fight, but a man of peace, reluctantly drawn to the use of force. When he makes a commitment to Irish independence, it is unyielding and entirely believable.
There is a cruel irony in the fact that a man who has been trained to save lives winds up taking them in the name of a cause.
The film gives a thorough airing to the politics of the period but finds its humanity in Damien's story and Murphy's naturalistic performance. He earns all our compassion as friends are executed and his girlfriend Sinead (Orla Fitzgerald) is cruelly treated by the British soldiers. In a situation this bleak, he has no alternative but to fight back, and yet with every escalation in the stakes he surrenders a little of his soul. The haunted, tortured look in Murphy's eyes reveals that he is all too aware of what he is sacrificing.
It is more than 10 years since Loach and Laverty collaborated on the Spanish Civil War story Land and Freedom, depicting the conflict between idealism and pragmatism evident in that struggle.
There are clear similarities with The Wind That Shakes the Barley, especially when there is a truce and the offer of a treaty that would allow for partial independence and the establishment of an Irish Free State. Paddy (sic) is keen to take the crumbs that have been offered by the British, while Damien sees the bigger picture and cannot countenance the betrayal of his socialist principles. "If we ratify this treaty, all we are changing is the accents of the powerful and the colour of the flag," he declares in a scene reminiscent of the earlier film's heated debate on the collectivisation of the land.
As an informative account of Irish politics in the 1920s, The Wind That Shakes the Barley ventures where few other films have dared to tread. Only Neil Jordan's disappointing Michael Collins biography and the stern James Cagney melodrama Shake Hands With the Devil come to mind as major works on the period. Those of us who know relatively little about the era can see that it is the key to understanding much of the political stances and conflicts that were to follow over the next 70 years.
That may make it sound little more than a history lesson but The Wind That Shakes the Barley also has the human touch that has been central to Loach's work from Cathy Come Home all the way through to Sweet Sixteen.
Loach's latest may appear to lack a sense of balance or fair-mindedness, but he makes up for that with pure passion. Damien's tragic fate is genuinely moving and the film stands as a powerful evocation of the forces that mould an ordinary, educated individual into a freedom fighter and martyr. The contemporary resonance couldn't be any clearer.
