The Wind That Shakes The Barley

Synopsis: It is County Cork in 1920 and Damien O’Donovan (Cillian Murphy) is about to leave Ireland to work as a doctor in London. At the last minute her decides to join his his brother, Teddy (Padraic Delaney) in the fight against British imperialism

The 2006 Palme d’Or winner, Ken Loach's portrayal of the early days of the IRA is an impassioned cry for the Irish Republican cause and, by extension, for all colonized peoples and their struggle for self-determination.

The opening scene of a game of hurling (an Irish sport similar to hockey) being played on a lush green field nicely sets the tone for what will be a bitter condemnation of British tyranny in Ireland and ultimately to develop into a tragedy of internecine war that we know persisted for generations to come.

Shortly after the game is finished the players are brutally set upon by a squad of "Black and Tans" (largely English soldiers demobilized at the end of World War I) for violating the English government's ban against public meetings by Irish citizen and one of the young men is beaten to death for refusing to give his name in English.

Whilst the cause it pleads is unquestionably heartfelt If there is any problem that dogs the film it is that it never manages to get much beyond this kind of strident opposition – the proud and honest Irish folk versus the English masters with their thuggish uniformed enforcers – which it plays out in multiple re-iterations. That, and a tendency to be overwhelmed by the conventions of the period film with its well-crafted production design, lush cinematography and romantic tone (the title and story of the film comes from a song about the Irish Rebellion of 1798 in which a young man sacrifices a home life with his true love to join the cause of the "bold, united men" fighting the English invader)

Generally Loach balances the personal drama with the historical context of events and does it with elegance, notably in a long sequence in which the men debate the creation of an Irish Free State in 1921 that left Unionist Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom, a compromise which some Sinn Fein militants saw as collaboration, much as the Free French would with the Vichy Government under the Nazis. 

The real kick of the film however is the way it demonstrates the terrible cost of brother turning against brother and the awful things done in the name of supposedly noble principles.  Of course, this is not reserved to the Irish situation but is seen again and again through history. As the saying goes: “Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it”, and this is as good as summary of Loach’s point as any.
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