“The Wind That Shakes the Barley” is a gripping and thought-provoking film that delves deep into the tumultuous period of Ireland’s fight for independence.
Directed by Ken Loach, this historical drama offers a poignant portrayal of the sacrifices made by the Irish people in their struggle against British rule. With a stellar cast and a powerful narrative, the film provides a comprehensive look at the complexities of war, loyalty, and the price of freedom.
Ken Loach’s Palmes d’Or winner is an ambitious and troubling work, with Loach’s usual effortlessly real mise-en-scene, but it is a retread, in story, theme, and feel, of his galvanizing 1995 film Land and Freedom.
Like that film, it centers on a set of heroes in a borderline-historical conflict who pay the price for sticking to their principles and are destroyed by the people they fought with and for, thus preserving a note of unbridled, uncompromised idealism within an otherwise shitty mess. Except that unlike in Land and Freedom, the romantic element is colorless.
Cillian Murphy’s hero eventually irritated me, signing on with anti-treaty forces to fight for a socialist Ireland and putting more innocent people, and finally himself, in mortal peril. This seriously weakens the would-be tragic conclusion, and the film actually does not measure up to Neil Jordan’s Michael Collins, a bolder work of cinema and political contemplation, even if Julia Roberts did suck in it.
