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As winner of the 2006 Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or, Ken Loach’s film enables a look forward by looking back in time.
Set in West Cork, Ireland in 1920, the story fixes on the strife within a group of Irish freedom fighters, the IRA’s Flying Column, attempting to reclaim Ireland’s independence from Britain’s cruel Black-and-Tan squads occupying the land.
The formerly apolitical Damien O’Donovan (Cillian Murphy) changes his mind and gives up a budding career as a physician to join the resistance with his fiercely idealistic brother Teddy (Padraic Delaney), whose familial and political loyalties will be sorely tested by the story’s end.
“The Wind That Shakes the Barley” evokes a crucial lesson that governments refuse to learn; occupied people always fight back with more at stake and nothing to lose.
Loach’s beautifully composed film is an exceptional work of vigorous cinematic art filled with dynamic performances by its all-Irish cast.
Here is an essential chapter of Irish history told in unsparing cinematic terms from a master of Cinema’s polemical potential.
Not Rated. 126 mins.
