ken loach's THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY (2006)

the world could use more artists like Ken Loach. over the past forty years, the iconoclastic British director has produced seventeen feature films and countless works for television, each of them brimming with the distinctly activist social conscience that’s seen him pegged as an unpatriotic agitator and kept more than a few projects off of the BBC’s airwaves. he’s also steadfastly resisted Hollywood’s beckon as it snatched up contemporaries and collaborators, and for good reason: his films seek to engage and enlighten rather than entertain.

thankfully, though, his talents have always struck a balance with his convictions, and as such adventurous, patient film fans have found much to love in his dramatic social realism. this is certainly the case with his most recent film, the Palm d’Or-winning The Wind That Shakes the Barley (as yet unreleased in Knoxville but currently available On Demand from Comcast), which sees Loach returning to history’s battlefields for a rich examination of the social economics of war and peace. set in early 1920s Ireland, Wind follows would-be medical student Damien O’Donovan (Cillian Murphy) as the brutality of British occupational forces spurs him to forego his studies and join his brother Teddy (Padraic Delaney) in the Irish Republican Army.

the two fight alongside each other for their cause, but a new conflict begins to arise from within even before the eventual military truce: Damien sees Ireland’s need for not only sovereignty but also a fresh socioeconomic start, while Teddy’s approach to expelling the Black And Tans is pragmatic and shortsighted, focusing only on tangible, immediate victory. when Ireland and Britain finally do sign a treaty ending the struggle (leaving Northern Ireland under British rule and the remaining Irish Free State conspicuously under the royal thumb), Teddy becomes an officer in the Irish government while Damien joins a growing coalition discontent with simply changing “the accents of the powerful and color of the flag.” The resulting Irish Civil War thus sets forth the perennial tragedy of brother against brother on the battlefield.

this isn’t unfamiliar territory for Loach, who probed similar ideological disconnect in the trenches of the Spanish Civil War in 1995’s Land and Freedom. but where that film followed a group of British volunteers into an increasingly hopeless foreign conflict, Wind strikes a far more personal tone as the O’Donovans see nationalism and familial love irrevocably clash, and this emotionally intimate angle on the politics of revolution is well-served by Loach’s typically naturalistic approach. the largely inexperienced Irish cast infuses the film with a passion rooted in the cultural repercussions of the Civil War that continue to haunt their country generations later, and though the O’Donovan brothers are certainly the center of the story, the script continually allows for an ensemble approach that pushes the historical and psychological detail to immersive levels.

the one drawback to Loach’s socialist fervor, however, is that he’s distinctly uninterested in presenting any viewpoint besides his own, and as a result the film sometimes feels like more of an ethics lecture than a history lesson. though by all accounts the Black And Tans were certainly ruthless, Wind presents them as caricatures of pure barbarity, drawing a thick black line between Good (the Irish) and Evil (the Britons). and while this low-key propagandizing certainly isn’t fatal, it does set up a problem for the final act: once the film’s sympathies shift to Damien’s side of the Civil War, Teddy’s initially lionized character is muddled by Loach’s continued inability to separate his cause from his content, and as a result the final scenes are robbed of the resonance they deserve.

otherwise, The Wind That Shakes the Barley is a remarkably nuanced, poignant essay on military occupation and the cultural and economic implications of rebuilding a nation in the face of continued war. it champions humanism and basic welfare as the building blocks of healthy nations, and laments that the horror of what we fight against can overshadow the intricacies of what we’re fighting for. and while it’s a shame that Ken Loach continues to blind his work to conflicting ideas, it’s some consolation that, forty years into his career, he’s still able to express his own with such eloquence.

(from the KNOXVILLE VOICE)