Film Review: The Way
the Wind Blows
By Gaetana
Caldwell-Smith / May 2007 issue of
Socialist Action newspaper
Socially
and politically conscious, British director Ken Loach has been quoted as
saying, "A movie isn’t a political movement, a party, or even an
article. It’s just a film. At best it adds its voice to public outrage."
Loach’s
latest film, the beautifully shot, engaging tragedy, "The Wind That
Shakes the Barley," is set in County
Cork, Ireland,
in 1920-21. Two years earlier, the Irish nationalist party, Sinn Fein, had
won a landslide in parliamentary elections. But when Sinn Fein declared an
independent parliament sitting in Dublin,
the British refused to recognize its right to rule. This sparked the War of
Independence from Britain—largely
a guerrilla war led by the Irish Republican Army.
"The
Wind" concerns two brothers who join the nascent IRA, and what effect
this has on them, their families, and friends. It is filmed against a
backdrop of simple stone homes and shops nestled in green, rocky hills.
Loach
shows British paramilitary forces—the Blacks and Tans—moving through the
villages. One early scene depicts a British squad beating to death a young
village lad who refused to say his Gaelic name in English. At his wake, an
old woman sings the haunting 19th-century revolutionary ballad, "The
Wind that Shakes the Barley."
After
witnessing this atrocity, and later brutality by the British, a young
medical student, Damien O’Donovan (Cillian
Murphy), belatedly decides to join his brother Teddy (Padraic
Delany) in the IRA. Yet they are but a few, with scant arms—most of which
they scavenge from the enemy dead—against tens of thousands of British
troops.
We see
young men, in long overcoats and caps, being trained in the tactics of
guerrilla warfare. Cradling their rifles, they crawl across the rocky
hillsides. A trainee pokes his head up, and a leader yells, "If they
see you they’ll kill you!"
Their
IRA "flying squad" is assisted by kids on bicycles and women
willing to put their lives at risk for the cause. A maid in the mansion
of Sir John Hamilton
(Roger Alan), a big landowner in the area, volunteers as a lookout for the
dissidents.
The
British officers exploit businessmen, pub-owners, and shopkeepers,
extracting fees for their "safety." In one scene, men are playing
pool in a pub when officers barge in. The officers then gather in a back
room to smoke and drink—where they are ambushed. The British retaliate by
shooting up the village, as women run screaming from their homes into the
streets.
Some
men are captured, Damien and Teddy O’Donovan among them, and are
rifle-butted into a stone shed, where Teddy is tortured. There, Damien
extols the sayings of famed Easter Rising socialist James Connolly, who
pointed out that if Ireland
were to gain formal independence from Britain,
without fundamentally changing the social system at the same time, it would
merely lead to continued economic domination by London.
As
Damien and his group await their execution, a young British soldier betrays
his superiors and assists them to escape, saying he doesn’t want their
deaths on his conscience.
Later,
a boy on a bicycle brings a message that a truce has been called. Everyone
celebrates with fiddle music, dancing, and drink. The signing of a peace
treaty will take place in Dublin.
But many become angry when they find that the new Irish Free State would be
qualified as a self-governing dominion of the British Empire, require
paying continued fealty to the British King, and allow Northern
Ireland to separate from the rest of Ireland
and to remain in the United
Kingdom.
The two
brothers find themselves in opposite camps. Damien vows to fight on in the
IRA for full independence. Teddy, on the other hand, joins the Free
State forces. He now wears a spiffy, black uniform
and engages in hunting down the IRA—much as the British Black and Tans had
done.
About
his film, which some saw as anti-British, Loach said, "I’d encourage
people to see their loyalties horizontally across national boundaries, so
that this isn’t a film about the Brits bashing the Irish.
People have much more in common with people in the same social position in other
countries than they do with, say, those at the top of their own society.
"We
hope that our film represents a small step in the relationship which the
British have with their imperialist past. If we dare to tell the truth about
the past, perhaps we shall dare tell the truth about the
present."
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