The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006)
Country: GB/EIRE/GER/IT/SP/SW
Technical: col 127m
Director: Ken Loach
Cast: Cillian Murphy, Liam Cunningham, Pádraic Delaney
Synopsis:
An aspiring doctor is sceptical of the workability of the Republican cause until he can look the other way no longer, but events prove his first impulse correct.
Review:
Not a synopsis, one suspects, likely to find much favour with the director, who here delivers another rueful examination of socialist principles compromised by realpolitik, wherein the hero's martyrdom comes with more bitter anger than bitter irony. What he is typically adept at shedding light on is the extent to which the struggle was as much one against the landed gentry and capitalist business owners as against the occupying British: any settlement which ousted the latter without the former was a waste of time and blood. But his holding to this thesis and its identification with the Damien character leads him to some melodramatic characterisations and schematic plotting. An interesting footsoldier's view of events to place alongside Jordan's Michael Collins, and a more powerful one.
Country: GB/EIRE/GER/IT/SP/SW
Technical: col 127m
Director: Ken Loach
Cast: Cillian Murphy, Liam Cunningham, Pádraic Delaney
Synopsis:
An aspiring doctor is sceptical of the workability of the Republican cause until he can look the other way no longer, but events prove his first impulse correct.
Review:
Not a synopsis, one suspects, likely to find much favour with the director, who here delivers another rueful examination of socialist principles compromised by realpolitik, wherein the hero's martyrdom comes with more bitter anger than bitter irony. What he is typically adept at shedding light on is the extent to which the struggle was as much one against the landed gentry and capitalist business owners as against the occupying British: any settlement which ousted the latter without the former was a waste of time and blood. But his holding to this thesis and its identification with the Damien character leads him to some melodramatic characterisations and schematic plotting. An interesting footsoldier's view of events to place alongside Jordan's Michael Collins, and a more powerful one.
Country: GB/EIRE/GER/IT/SP/SW
Technical: col 127m
Director: Ken Loach
Cast: Cillian Murphy, Liam Cunningham, Pádraic Delaney
Synopsis:
An aspiring doctor is sceptical of the workability of the Republican cause until he can look the other way no longer, but events prove his first impulse correct.
Review:
Not a synopsis, one suspects, likely to find much favour with the director, who here delivers another rueful examination of socialist principles compromised by realpolitik, wherein the hero's martyrdom comes with more bitter anger than bitter irony. What he is typically adept at shedding light on is the extent to which the struggle was as much one against the landed gentry and capitalist business owners as against the occupying British: any settlement which ousted the latter without the former was a waste of time and blood. But his holding to this thesis and its identification with the Damien character leads him to some melodramatic characterisations and schematic plotting. An interesting footsoldier's view of events to place alongside Jordan's Michael Collins, and a more powerful one.