Certification. 15
Ken Loach's The Wind That Shakes The Barley is an absorbing watch. Set in County Cork in the 1920s, the film provides a comprehensive history lesson on the Irish War of Independence from the perspective of two republican brothers - Teddy O'Donovan (Pádraic Delaney) and Damien O'Donovan (Cillian Murphy). The story of defiance won the Palme d'Or at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival.
The title of the film - The Wind That Shakes The Barley - comes from an Irish folk song written by the poet Robert Dwyer Joyce, and the song features early in the film.
The Wind That Shakes The Barley is a sobering, no-nonsense social and political commentary. Ken Loach ensures the audience is all too aware of the brutality of the occupying British forces through the unflinching depiction of combat, torture and execution.
The costume design by Eimer Ni Mhaoldomhnaigh is perfection, with characters appearing in an array of appropriately drab and heavy, workmanlike clothes which complement the almost incomprehensible thick, Irish brogue spoken throughout. Cillian Murphy, in particular, is excellent as the reluctant insurgent, "I tried not to get into this war, and did. I now try to get out, and can't."
The film suffers from Ken Loach's passive camera, which is content to merely observe the events unfolding in front of it and document the ever-increasing conflict between moderates and extremists. Nonetheless, there are few films so lucid in explaining the beginnings of terrorism and the radicalisation of an individual as The Wind That Shakes The Barley.
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