The Wind That Shakes The Barley (director Ken Loach) Reviewed by Piers Mostyn This excellent film about the Irish War of Independence is deceptive. It works subtly at different levels whilst appearing to be a fairly straightforware distanceana
It is the history of a small rural community's response to the British terror in 1918. From the start we see individuals reacting differently. some are more, some are less reluctant to take up arms.
All are driven by forces of history much bigger than themselves but there is nothing pre-determined about how each politically responds.
An example is the brutal militarist discipline that leads to the summary execution of informers. Those carrying it out are not psychopaths who enjoy violence. Rather they are driven by the terrible logic of the struggle they are involved in. The film makes little moral judgement, leaving such questions in the hands of the viewer.
Within this history, there is another level of narrative, following the particular trajectory of two brothers.
They end up on opposite sides in the civil war, leading to the bitterly tragic finale. At this level the film is a very powerful emotional drama that will tear at the hardest heart, from whatever political background.
This gloomy ending is a lesson in the price paid for disunity, but the exploration of the sources of division provides the third and core level at which the film operates.
This is a running subtheme about socialism and class. One of the main characters was a volunteer in James Connolly's citizen army.
Periodic debates occur as alternative perspectives and strategies are thrashed out -reminiscent of Loach's Spanish Civil War epic "Land and Freedom"
I came out of the cinema wishing this strand had occupied more space in the narrative.
But I realised that, quite apart from rendering the film inaccessible to all but a tiny audience of Marxists, it would also have been historically inaccurate.
Tragically, the Connolly tradition and the working class occupied far too small a space in the real struggle that unfolded between 1918 and 1923. The film doesn't flinch from reflecting that - hence the depressing outcome
But those episodes are worth cherishing as highlights of socialist film making.
In one, thuggish Black and Tan soldiers at a railway station are confronted by a train that won't move because the driver's union is boycotting British military personnel and equipment... a message for transport workers in contemporary Impertanst wars.
Another outstanding scene shows a "people's court" in a town under republican control. Sharp class tensions run through the heart of the proceedings, the resolution to which determines the continued existence of the fragile dual power situation that we gradually realise we are witnessing.
The film also impacts on three political targets. It provides a historical template for the Iraq war - a parallel never hinted at, although Loach and screenwriter Paul Laverty have made clear this was a key motive in making Here, for anyone having
difficulty interpreting the
daily news out of Baghdad is a primer in the brutal realities
of imperialist occupation and nationalist resistance. the film.
Here, for anyone having difficulty interpreting the daily news out of Baghdad is a primer in the brutal realities of imperialist occupation and nationalist resistance.
Secondly, it is an antidote to two decades of historical revisionism on the national question in Ireland.
This topsy-turvy approach has acted as ideological midwife enabling the Dublin Free State government to recommence official commemorations of the 1916 Rising and Sinn Fein to enthusiastically advocate partitionist government - both witnout Irony or embarrassmell
Expressed in the biopic Michael Collins, this new orthodoxy now has its cinematic challenge.
And finally, it poses an alternative to "physical force" republicanism, whose sentimental mythologising of the war fails to acknowledge that defeat was inevitable without a political strategy to beat imperialism.
With great photography, script and acting it is an achingly beautiful film, too.