Ken Loach's dramatic film about Ireland's struggle for independence in the 1920s was awarded the prize for best film at the Cannes Film Festival this year, the Palme D'Or. The Wind That Shakes the Barley will be playing the Toronto International Film Festival later in the week, and I suppose will receive a North American distribution depending on how it is received by the audience.
So how is The Wind That Shakes the Barley? It's a very good film, and definitely worth your time especially if you've been curious about it, but for me it fell below my expectations, not only because of the fact that it had won a prestigious award, but because the film's second half sadly did not manage to keep me invested in the story. The Wind That Shakes the Barley's first half is incredibly powerful, and several emotional blows are dealt, but the second half falls into what seems to be a slow monotony in comparison. Where the ending would have been a severe emotional blow, it only leaves feelings of quiet sorrow.
The story follows some of the residents of a small rural community in Cork, Ireland, and the first scenes of the film show a group of young men playing hockey in a field. It's a very idyllic scene, and a nice way to pull you inside the story. Very quickly, however, we witness the brutality of English presence in Ireland as some soldiers torment the boys for having a "public meeting," referring to their game. Soon thereafter, the hockey sticks become makeshift rifles during a training session for battle. Gone is the idyllic Ireland of poetry and folklore, and this new Ireland represents the reality of occupation, and from that point we only witness the horrors of a war for the right to autonomy.
There is so much to love about Ken Loach's film. The landscapes around Cork are muted, with grey skies overseeing bright green grasses, and simple painterly houses made of stone and clay with straw roofs. The cinematography, production design, and shot compositions are really beautiful to watch. Everything about the visual aspects is very subtle and this adds a perfect authenticity to the feel of the entire film, as though the film itself were made several decades ago (not the 1920s, but perhaps the 60s or 70s). The gunfights that we see are very simply done, with virtually no choreography, but Loach masterfully captures the visceral tension of these situations. These scenes also look beautiful as the Irish men, dressed in trench coats and flat caps, are carefully positioned on the hills, cloaked by the barley.
The story and dialogue of the first half are perfect, and the characters very well drawn out. Though Damien O'Donovan (Cillian Murphy) is in some sense the main character, there is mostly a sense of an ensemble of characters in this film, and all the actors are giving terrific, muted and naturalistic performances. Ken Loach is a master of staging ideological debates and arguments among his characters. Thinking back on the film, I realized that in fact there were quite a few speeches that were given, all very naturally and seamlessly integrated into the flow of the film, but this is a very difficult thing to accomplish. One aspect of Loach's choice of how to stage these, which I really enjoyed (but only noticed toward the end), was that often characters would stumble on a word or two in the middle of a discourse, as someone who is passionately speaking on a subject would do in real life. With such little touches, the characters become very easy to relate to, and a strong emotional connection is drawn between them and the viewers.
During the first hour of the film, the pacing is perfect, the story is powerful, the dialogue is rich, the characters completely natural, the tension is high as the Irish are in conflict with the English. The filmmaking is very ambitious at every step, never taking the easy way to show something, and never using a cheap trick to pull an emotional response. The harsh and straightforward storytelling is contrasted with some beautiful, and yet muted visuals, and happy moments are contrasted by horror throughout. This incredibly powerful first half became a double-edged sword for The Wind That Shakes the Barley. It was too good, and perhaps it was a certainty that the second half would not be able to carry the same weight until the resolution.
At the beginning of the second half, it seemed as though Ken Loach hit a fast-forward button, and very quickly, too quickly, everything is changed and our group of heroes is divided. There is such a radical shift in not only the story, but also in the attitudes of the characters. Yes, these are all explainable by the first half, but things are moved so quickly at first that I was pulled out of the story. Why did Ken Loach (or rather screenwriter Paul Laverty) do this? So that a nearly perfect parallel can be established with the first half. The problem with this is that the parallel is a very easy and logical one. And after about five or ten minutes into the second half, the end of the film becomes so painfully obvious that you spend the remainder of its duration waiting to see what you expect. This is really such a sad occurrence, and I sincerely hope that most viewers do not feel the same disengagement that I felt in the second half. Of course, as soon as you are able to step back from such a film in the middle of it, it begins to feel slow and unsurprising.
There really is so much to love in The Wind That Shakes the Barley, and overall it is such a beautiful film to watch, but after the sublime first half, I expected so much more from the second half. The resolution is still painful, but it did not reach the level of devastation that it should have. This is nevertheless a very good film, and I do recommend watching it, but it could have been so much more. The wind did indeed shake me, but more lightly than it could have, or should have.
