The Wind that Shook the Barley

Directed by Ken Loach

Written by Paul Laverty

By Carmel Mc Mahon

After receiving the Palme d’Or at its debut at Cannes, The Wind that Shakes the Barley shook the nerves of the British reviewers. They accused director Ken Loach and scriptwriter Paul Laverty of spreading anti-British sentiment. On the other side of the Irish Sea, Irish reviewers offered conspiracy theories as to why films about the British atrocities committed in Ireland were never supported throughout the years. All this before many had even seen the film. With its reputation preceding it, I sat down to watch it with my father this past Christmas, who promised that long dormant feelings of nationalism would be awoken in the DNA my Irish breast.

The film centers on the lives of two brothers united in the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921) and then divided in the Irish Civil War following (1922-1923). In one of the opening scenes Micheail, a lad of 17, is shot by the notoriously vicious Black and Tans (British WW1 vets who signed up to supplement the British police force in Ireland). Not only had he been playing an illegal native game of hurley, but then he was a cocky bastard and refused to give his name in the English language.

This scene is echoed throughout the film not only with the subsequent executions, but with the reading of the treaty that sparked the civil war. Irish delegates were forced by threat of “immediate and terrible war” to accept a treaty that gave a great deal of political autonomy to twenty-six counties in the South. Aside from losing six counties in the North—they had to pledge allegiance to the king of England. Loach conveys the complexity of the situation showing how on the one hand, Irish people degraded by years of poverty and violence, were willing to accept the flawed treaty if it got the British out of their communities. On the other hand, the early IRA were unable to stomach such a demand knowing that this pledge undermined their own to the newly formed Irish parliament, Dáil Éireann, thus undoing the work they had accomplished to that point, and jeopardizing the future of their fight for independence.

Loach is a master of realism and in the tradition of his other “socialist-realist” pieces, Carla’s Song, Bread and Roses and Land and Freedom, The Wind that Shakes the Barley is a microcosm of the larger social problem. Instead of tackling the big story from its political seat in Dublin and London, he examines it from a rural community in Co. Cork, where the film was shot on location. Much is made of the fact that he used, as he has often done, local people for some of the roles and all of the extras. There is something about a toothless old woman that is different to one made up to look like one. A low budget production delivered such scenes as the one where Teddy (Padraic Delaney) is being tortured in a prison cell we do not see his fingernails being removed one by one with a dirty pliers, but his screams fuel the imagination which is capable of worse productions then the most advanced technology-based simulation.

The events are fictional, but many are based on accounts from the era, both of the Black and Tans and the I.R.A. Although Loach is certainly more sympathetic to the republican cause, he does show that the violence is dished from both sides.

Visually it is an incredibly beautiful film. The colors are in the muted greeny- greys and browns of the Irish countryside and the Irish characters are soft-spoken and sympathetic, even as they commit and have committed on them, acts of horrific violence. Most notable of these is the character played by Cillian Murphy, himself a native of Co. Cork, whose resume includes roles in Batman Begins and Breakfast on Pluto. His angular facial features shift between the innocent and the sinister as if the “daemons and the gods wage an eternal battle” beneath the surface, making him the ideal candidate for the role of Damien, whose loyalties are torn between the rock and the hard place of his country and his brother.

The Wind That Shakes the Barley takes its title from a nineteenth century folk song written for the rebels of the Irish Rebellion of 1798, and a reminder of Ireland’s long resistance to British rule. It is a nod to the complexities of wars that ravage nations in the wake of imperialist occupations.

My father was wrong. I did not leave the film wanting to semtex the British. In Ireland’s “Celtic tiger” economy, national borders are no longer the issue. The NY Times reported recently that emissions from transportation in Ireland have increased 140% since 1990. A couple of days later, the BBC reported that 100% of Irish Euro bank notes had traces of cocaine on them. The Irish have their problems; they are just not overwhelmingly British for the first time in eight hundred years. Along with upgrading their cars and drugs, they have welcomed thousands of new immigrant workers from all over the world, changing the face of Irish national identity and fostering an understanding of the struggles of ordinary people negatively affected by the decisions made on their behalf by the few in power. It was not for my old country that I mourned, it was for my new one, the United States and their decision regarding Iraq, even as I sat there in a comfortable chair, shoving fistfuls of overpriced popcorn into my maw and washing it down with a super-size cherry coke.

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