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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3491 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-11-26
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 122 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Winner of the Palme d'Or at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, this gripping drama by Ken Loach (Raining Stones) is set during the early days of the Irish Republican Army, when British occupation of the Irish radicalised many a citizen and caused some to take up arms. Cillian Murphy plays Damien, a medical student on his way to London when he witnesses a couple of atrocities committed by British troops. Instead of becoming a doctor, he turns into a leading and respected figure in an IRA division led by his brother, Teddy (Padraic Delaney).

The film provides some fascinating historical insight into the nascent resistance movement as it was in 1920, and Loach brilliantly conveys the profound emotional transition young men had to make to become saboteurs and killers. Loach's realistic style is absolutely mesmerizing, with many scenes built around the dynamics of large groups: contentious meetings, torture sessions, battles, celebrations, and the like. One has the sense of history as a pool of energy, and one also develops a kind of Renoir-esque appreciation for the fact that different people on opposing sides of a life-or-death issue have their reasons for believing what they believe. As the story moves along, subtle shifts in the perspectives of men and women who had once agreed to be absolute in their fight for freedom results in a tragic yet understandable schism among Irish patriots. The final half-hour of The Wind That Shakes The Barley says a lot about how the Irish, including people who had known one another all their lives, turned their wrath on one another for so many decades. This is an outstanding film, featuring the best performance yet by Murphy (Red Eye). --Tom Keogh

Synopsis
Set in Cork, Ireland in 1920, Damien abandons a career as a doctor after seeing a friend of his murdered by a British soldier and joins his brother Teddy in an Irish Republican Army unit in order to defeat the occupying British force. After a violent struggle, the two sides agree a treaty to end the conflict. However, civil war erupts and families and friendships are stretched to the limit and Damien and Teddy find themselves on opposing sides as Damien views the treaty as a sell-out that fails to bring all of Ireland under Irish control. British director Ken Loach (KES, LAND AND FREEDOM) became the 59th winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes with this emotional drama about the Irish Civil War of the 1920s and the film features superb performances from a young Irish cast.

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Customer Reviews

Highly recommended.
This movie's central story is of two brothers on diverging political paths. Ken Loach presents us with a snap shot of the early days of the Irish freedom struggle in 1920 which casts forward the suggestion that any compromise with Britain is a betrayal.

As the British mercineries `Black and Tans' torture and murder their way through the Irish countryside two brothers (Cillian Murphy P.Delaney) are forced to join the IRA reluctantly.

As the story goes on Loach expertly shows us both sides of the conflict. He suggests that the British army were murderous in Ireland due to the 4 years of hell they suffered during WW1.
He also shows us the motives of the Irish IRA volunteers: "I studied Medicine for 5 years," says Cillian Murphy who puts aside dreams of becoming a doctor to fight for the cause. "Then I shoot a man; I hope that what we're fighting for is worth it."

This is Loach back to his Land and Freedom best; he is not the anti-Brit that some critics maintained. He is just playing his own brand of the patriot game.Highly recommended.

An Impartial Analysis?
Well, I suppose anyone going to see a Ken Loach film and expecting an impartial analysis would have to be ignorant of the history of post-war cinema. Loach is committed to a left-wing analysis and it is to his credit that this film is so persuasive in presenting that analysis.

The high point in this generally excellent film is the debate within the IRA cadre as to whether the partition settlement should be accepted. This is political drama as it should be - we, the audience, waver in our sympathies, seeing, because the Director has had the courage and honesty to see, both sides of the question. The debate is enthralling not only because the arguments are so equally balanced, but because it is fully dramatised - we never loose interest in the characters whose personalities are never subordinated to the requirements of the debate.

If we sympathise with those who hold out against the partition treaty (and the leader of these is played by a fine actor who engages and retains our sympathy) then it must (perhaps uncomfortably) occur to us that perhaps we should have the same sympathy for those in the Real IRA who hold out against the Good Friday Agreement. Thus is historical drama made relevant to today's politics.

I have a couple of quibbles, and I put them forward with some misgivings because Loach is a great hero of modern cinema. The British are depicted - almost to the point of caricature - as brutes. Now it is true that the Black and Tans were reputed to be very brutal, and this is often seen as a consequence of the years that some of them had spent in the trenches, but they were human beings too, just as much victims, perhaps, of imperialism as the Irish. I don't think Loach is even-handed here. Much is made of the suffering of the Irish Nationalists (particularly in the torture scene) but when the British die - as they do in the ambush and in the killing of the four soldiers in the snooker hall - they do so quietly, without apparent pain. I have praised Loach's courage and honesty in giving both points of view in the Partition debate, and so in fairness I must add that that honesty is not displayed here. On could contrast it with Forster's "Passage to India" where Imperialism is condemned, but where there is also an understanding that those deputed to carry out the mundane tasks necessary for maintaining empire are also victims of it.

Another quibble is an historical one. Much was made in the film of the British threats of invasion if the Irish did not accept partition. But Loach omits to mention the hundred thousand Ulster Protestants - armed and fearful, who would have caused mayhem if full Irish independence had been granted. Had Ireland been granted full independence, the Ulstermen would have risen and Britain would have felt obliged to intervene. The trouble with politics is that it's so damned complicated!

The killing of brother by brother perhaps looses some force because it is something of a cliche. It is prefigured, incidentally, in Liam O'Flaherty's short story "The Sniper". If readers will forgive a digression, I would also add that the cold-blooded shooting of a prisoner is the subject of Frank O'Connor's short story "Guest of the Nation".

Four stars only, then, for a film which tells a moving and exciting story well, engages in political analysis that is convincingly dramatised, and is beautifully acted and shot. Four stars only, because Loach can't bring himself to admit that being shot is just as painful for an imperialist lackey as it is for a freedom fighter. Four stars only because Loach won't admit that fighting for a good cause can make men bad. Four stars only because Loach won't admit that the choices politicians sometimes have to make are between bad and worse.

But let us remember that if there is some lack of balance in Loach's analysis, he is working in a genre which daily voids gallons of brutal matter on the (I have to say, welcoming) public - films, exploiting the pornography of violence, whose implicit (but oh so crude!) message is that might is right, the American way the only way and that God has blessed current disposition of wealth and poverty, starvation and gluttony, liberty and enslavement.

Five stars.
The Wind that Shakes the Barley follows the life of two young Irish brithers who are fighting for the IRA to win back freedom for their country. Damien (Cillian Murphy) has just finished is qualifications to be a doctor but is persuaded to join the small group of rebels, by his brother Teddy (Padraic Delany). But as different ideas of what a free Ireland is, turns into a civil war, the brothers are torn apart and families are turned aginst one another.

The acting in this film is very good (if not a little shouty in places), especially as most of them are volunteers. The story portrays a very realistic 1920's Ireland and the perminantly grey weather throughout strengthens that point. Cillian Murphy, Liam Cunningham and Padraic Delaney do well in their roles as the Irish rebels.
Ken Loach creates a film of depth and meaning and help you understand the troubles of what Irelnad went through. Loach has not created an Anti-British film, as some critics suggest, just shown it through the eyes of an Irishman who would obviuosly hate them.
Overall, A very good film. 8.5/10