A strong Wind

Timed to arrive on the eve of St. Patrick's Day, the Cannes-winning The Wind That Shakes the Barley (opens March 16) is free of blarney, of either the Irish or Hollywood varieties--the latter exemplified by the kill-happy digital cartoon 300. Death is a very serious business in this period IRA drama, but, then again, its director, Britain's socialist maverick Ken Loach, has never had a light or tranquil thought. I prefer those films of his when an agenda of some kind takes a back seat to a thoughtfully observed humanism--Ladybird Ladybird (1994), My Name is Joe (1998), and Sweet Sixteen (2001) are deeply moving portraits of flawed and troubled lives, conditions exacerbated but not entirely the fault of poverty and other social ills. Many of these films, including the new one, were written by former journalist Paul Laverty, and they are trenchantly observed. So, too, is Wind, even if the period drama, set in Ireland between 1920-1922, is more of a polemic, though not as much as its fiercest conservative critics have suggested.

Ireland is a perennially loaded subject, and as an interview with Loach and Laverty in the Spring edition of Cineaste notes the English newspapers went at the film with guns blazing. In an America where Irish groups are more troubled over gays participating in their parades than the roots of IRA violence, the film is unlikely to generate as much heat. Like Loach's film of the Spanish Civil War, Land and Freedom (1995), The Wind That Shakes the Barley is very densely concentrated in its history, with long passages where politics and policies are debated, and I'm not sure how an audience not fortified, as I was, with press notes and the new Cineaste will make of it. Mindful of this, Loach and Laverty have dramatized the situation in the oldest of ways, as the clash between two brothers who find themselves on opposite sides of the fence as Britain's notorious Black and Tan squads attempt to quash Ireland's bid for independence. Teddy (Padraic Delaney) attempts to stick to the letter of the law when their guerrilla tactics work and a treaty comes to pass, but Damien (well-played, as always, by the doll-faced Cillian Murphy), consumed with guilt over the murder of spies within the ranks, continues to fight, arguing that the forfeiture of his eternal soul demands no less than a free and uncompromised Ireland.

While unsympathetic toward the British, and uninterested in a standard-issue fair and balanced portrait, this is a thoughtful film. The Black and Tan atrocities, particularly against women, are presented unsparingly. So, too, though, is the IRA violence--the execution of an Anglo-Irish landowner, which is presented in pastoral daylight, is equally ghastly. I disagree that the film, in the end, takes an unambiguously pro-IRA stance; violence simply begets more violence, which in itself is a cause for mourning and not celebration. Condemnatory conservatives seem to have missed this distinction. (Whether Loach has appropriated the IRA and its history, and has refashioned it to advance his socialist beliefs, is a matter addressed by Cineaste editor-in-chief Gary Crowdus in a wide-ranging review of the film.)

The Wind That Shakes the Barley (the title comes from a poem by Robert Dwyer Joyce) is being distributed by IFC First Take, which releases films on what's left of the arthouse circuit and also, simultaneously, to the IFC In Theaters on- demand cable service. Given the tiny print ad I saw in the paper this weekend I assume that cable will be getting the larger marketing push, and if broadcasting the film helps it reach a larger audience I can't really criticize the strategy. Anyone who has access to a theatrical presentation but chooses to tune in on cable, however, is only undercutting himself. Barry Ackroyd's soft-toned cinematography is among the best I have ever seen for a modestly budgeted period feature, and has, to borrow from Yeats, a terrible beauty on the big screen that will inevitably be diminished on the small.