Film about the Irish War of Independence wins the Palme D'Or at Cannes
[Partridge: Yes, I'm as shocked as you. Not that this won, but at this actually good write up in the *Daily Mail*. I clicked on it expecting to read a anti-Loach diatribe, and was pleasantly surprised. Perhpas it has something to do with the fact that Mail recently launched an Irish version of their paper and are 'playing to the demographics'?]
Loach in passionate and provocative mood
Daily Mail
Put Ken Loach's movie The Wind That Shakes the Barley in the column titled 'films that matter'. You have to admire Loach who has been consistent in over 40 years of making movies in standing up for what he believes in. He has never cut his cloth, to steal a phrase, to fit this season's fashions.
He has always worked outside of a studio's control zone,which has enabled him ,with his hard-working producer Rebecca O'Brien,to make pictures that are radically, socially and politically at odds with the mainstream.
Early on in The Wind That Shakes The Barley, Damien O'Donovan (a superb Cilliian Murphy) is saying his goodbyes to family and friends before setting off to England to work as a doctor.
But he witnesses a a unit of Black and Tans (ill-disciplined ex British soldiers sent to Ireland in 1920 by the British government) murder an innocent lad because he refused to speak English and would only converse in his native tongue.
http://a69.g.akamai.net/7/69/7515/v1...o/2006/258.jpg
G'wan Ken. You deserve it!
The horror of the incident convinces him to stay on and join his brother Teddy (noble Padraic Delaney),and others,including Liam Cunningham's train driver turned terrorist, in facing up to the ruthless Black and Tan squads.
They form a volunteer guerrilla army in their struggle to thwart the invaders. They want to an independent Ireland and believe it's their right to fight for it.
Violent reprisals lead to further bloody acts by both sides. The Black and Tans, a so-called peace-keeping force, committ atrocious acts ,but the Republicans employ classic guerilla tactics to propel them.
Such scenes, as shot by Loach,and his master cinematographer Barry Ackroyd, brilliantly convey the sense of desperate combat at a desperate time.
Loach and his long-time screenwriter Paul Laverty meander halfway through the film ,but it's still pure Loach, as they try and balance the arguments. Stick with it and you are rewarded.
The film-maker though has always seen the British Empire as a monument of exploitation and conquest, and it's not difficult here to see how the story in The Wind That Shakes the Barley reflects another foreign power sending in troops to an almost third-world country today.As the director noted to me Monday night after winning the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, 'Maybe if we start telling the truth about the past, we can start telling the truth about the present'.
The Black and Tans have become a blight on our history in Ireland and Loach wants us to understand and acknowledge that. It would be truly marvelous if the audiences that turned out for X-Men: The Last Stand would also troop in to see Loach's latest,but I know that won't happen. To entice them,Loach would have had to have turned his film into populist hack fare. He couldn't do that, it's not in his blood.
It's worth noting that the film's title comes from a Fenian folk song written by Robert Dwyer Joyce (1830-1883) that when read in full is as profoundly moving as the movie.
Here's one verse: Twas hard the woeful words to frame. To break the ties that bound us. But harder still to bear the shame. Of Foreign chains around us.
The Wind That Shakes The Barley, passionate and provocative, opens in the UK soon.
[Partridge: Interestingly, while this time around Loach was widely cheered and lauded in the winners press conference - in 1990 his film Hidden Agenda won the Cannes Special Jury Prize. He was harangued by British film critics at that press conference. The subject matter of that film was the British State's 'shoot to kill' policy in Northern Ireland. Seems atrocties 80 years ago are ok to frown upon, but not the more recent ones. I hope Ken makes a film about Iraq or Afghanistan.]