Whenever I get ready to watch a movie good (insert laugh) Ken Loach, I imagine myself in a class and the teacher getting very simpaticote pinko and he starts giving us a history lesson and its strategy is to convince everyone that we take part in empirical facts on which we judge these characters without taking into account the historical context in which these events occurred, without judging the education received by those persons, or without understanding the social and lifestyle of the time. I crush your head, you point the finger and makes you wonder whether you are a good person if you support his own cause, whether just or not (I shall not evaluate this issue as we talk about history, past events) and nothing short of disrespect you if you fail in what they want. The funny thing is that British film is neither more nor less than the highest Manichaean the film industry, so blatant camouflaging its supposedly revolutionary ideas and looking for objectivity and realism from the more extreme subjectivity, and that is why Wind That Shakes the Barley pamphlet ends up being a bit ridiculous at the network level and with little to humanize the two parties to an armed conflict, in addition to the coolness with which Loach tells facts which, starting from base quite dramatically, as is the country's political conflict and fighting between friends or brothers as this happens, and please all those unable to see beyond their noses and understand the complexity of an event that dates back nearly 800 years in the past, and the impudent director here becomes a treaty of offensive partisanship ending away from the Irish nationalist question (thing absolutely legitimate and I agree that until the last point) to focus on its stale topicazo social cinema, where the wicked oppressors are wealthy landowners who support the British and good-natured film, those who have no advantage in life and struggle for a just cause is the poor lower-class Irish who exceed all the problems in carrying out his revolution and triumph over evil, and which is neither more nor less than proletarian version of Michael Collins Hollywood a few years ago made the always interesting Neil Jordan, and here has a start scene sober and somewhat inert, and if it is true that you have another great sequence, the director almost cleared and ends up being a movie without any force.
Within this alleged historicism Loach looking into the story, it makes two major errors in his narrative and structure of the film: if you want to be historical and verismo should give a broader view of certain facts, as it passes for high enough important elements of conflict, as the presence of Michael Collins and De Valera, his signing of the treaty or its virulent anti once Ireland is split into two halves, and the excessive distance that permeates the story, making it impossible to establish links between two main characters, brothers O'Donovan, and the viewer, which will be debated in his mind which of the two should support policies according to their own ideas and not because he actually cares what happens to one or the other, as , depending on height of the movie, that matters as well as the color of the eyes of Ana Botella. The script, by longtime collaborator Paul Laverty, is riddled with inconsistencies between the protagonists contradictions, especially Damian O'Donovan, a very good Cillian Murphy, a character capable of executing in cold blood a fellow murderers but then accuse protrat and unfair to do exactly the same (perhaps not realize Loach, but is a representation of his films, quite a liar and manipulator). There is a scene that adds nothing, one in which Sinead Damian tells her encounter with the boy's mother executed, and would have achieved a major result being told visually and not to the words of the protagonist, but I imagine that no Loach would like to charge for such responsibility to their cultured and refined hero character that never really came to understand its full evolution, because in just a couple of scenes we see changes from a neutral and rather cowardly blockhead, to call it somehow be the end of the most idealized patriotism, leaving Collins, the father of the Irish homeland, the height of the bitumen. And that's another matter. It is, at least, the harsh fact that the real revolutionaries, those who are right, are guided by a character study, since, in a way no rube will be able to realize the injustices committed by the British towards the Irish, and not corrupt as the evil Teddy, mix between Judas and Cain, with whom he is primed to show his iron Loach doctrine and show how much was wrong with his little brother, the intellectual of the family (although, ironically, the kid can study even though his family has no money).
The resort, well-worn, but no less effective, placing starring two brothers, is fairly predictable, and its similarity to the Irish Civil War and the vision of Paddy O'Donovan Cain is very poor. Would ever have courage if his ideas and his message were not so clean and not to demonize the British and Irish protrat to exhaustion, but when dividing the story into two parts, the play will go wrong and, in fact, maliciously, it could get support proingleses to the kitsch and the heroism of Murphy's book character, and his false view of farmers, able to drop a political tirade in the middle of a meeting of the Irish rebels where to find pros and anti treaty, and wherein the second talk consistent with reasons and arguments, while the former can hardly be justified babble and questions, irrefutable evidence to the director of his ill-advised ideas, and, moreover, is the most incredible scenes (and implausible) and boring the whole tape. Completely destroying the historical, as I said above, the portraits of the English as well as being superficial, which only will swallow the most dupes, is that of a dehumanized killing machines, the only thing they do in Ireland is to enjoy killing native and non-stop abusing them, neither more nor less than that performed in the 40's in Hollywood on Nazis, and indeed, this film has much in common with the other hand, portentous Hangmen Also Die, the (yes) master Fritz Lang. True, in the classic Austrian director had didacticism, and a clear good and bad, with that Brecht's own intellectualism that was something cold and hard to grasp by the viewer Loach likes both, but lacking the force of another, and, above all, moral debate that has been submitted to Brian Donlevy, between doing the right thing and surrender to the Nazis, while here the creation of Cillian Murphy is a hero in the Homeric sense of the word, strong and without weaknesses to fight the evil giants attacking people. And, in The Wind That Shakes the Barley not no room for debate, English destroys any attempt of reflection by the viewer and makes him swallow his message, it really dangerous to justify the fact, so quite explicit, the use of violence, leading to sympathize with the IRA, something similar to what made the cake in his allegedly inflammatory Medem The Basque Ball . There were more ideas, a priori, more interesting, such as dehumanization caused by the war on people, or the inability to mix law and war, but that does not matter at the point where they'll become the film, a parody of children looking for small to eat the head and left wing people here see the classic songs mythologized to the ridicule of a struggle based on ideals quite correct, but where the end should never justify the means and to see supported its political and sign that the festival is happening something strange and it looks all that is removing political consciences ... mine, of course, to forget, is that I am an evil mataboers