THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY

This may be the most Irish movie I’ve ever seen.

And you may miss some of the dialogue, not just the small amount that’s in Irish, but some in English, because of the heavy accents.

And have a little trouble following the subtleties of the story if you don’t know some Irish history, especially the early 20th century part, including the leadership and martyrdom of James Connelly in the 1916 Easter Rebellion, followed by the birth of the IRA, and then the compromise truce with the English, disrupted by Civil War.

But—and it’s an elemental BUT—you can still follow, and appreciate the movie totally, because the story itself explains all of the above emotionally, if not explicitly, through the relationships that are presented with such naturalistic acting and artistry you feel when it’s over you just lived through this history yourself.

Or at least I did.

For me, it’s a great movie.

I saw it several days ago and haven’t been able to get a lot of the imagery and dialogue and emotional impact out of my heart and head. Nor do I want to.

Cillian Murphy is the star, and his beautiful eyes and understated acting, for the most part, make the movie worth it alone.

But every actor in it seems as real as my cousins who still live there. I didn’t see one false move in the film.

Some critics have a hard time with the director, Ken Loach, for various idiosyncrasies of style, or think his scripts, especially this one, are too didactic or expository, but, every thing in this one rang true to life to me.

If you’re interested at all in the human aspect of the history of how Ireland finally threw off centuries of oppression by the English, or at least the Southern counties that make up the Irish Free State did—or if you just want to see a situation we’ve seen too often since, including in Iraq, from the point of view of “the other”—this is the movie to see.

It makes a perfect book end with John Ford’s classic black and white 1935 film THE INFORMER, set during the same era and addressing the same topics. Filmed closer to the actual time of the events dramatized, but performed in a now dated style, it nonetheless won a Best Actor Oscar for Victor McLaglen, (who would go on to a career of mostly playing sidekick to John Wayne in various Westerns, and Wayne’s nemesis in John Ford’s later tribute to his Irish roots, THE QUIET MAN) as well as Oscars for Ford’s directing, Max Steiner for his score and Dudley Nichols for Best Screenplay.

In fact I highly recommend watching the two films back to back, or on consecutive nights.

And then to round out a good filmic education on this theme, the three movies mentioned so far, (THE QUIET MAN might seem slight compared to the others, but the humor in the treatment of the IRA during the 1950s when things were relatively and briefly calm on the island reflected the misconception that “the cause” was more to be satirized than taken seriously at the time), THE FIELD (Richard Harris in his best performance in a story that for many Irish I know epitomized the problems with the Irish themselves that may have partly arisen from the centuries of oppression but were also partly a result of the Irish internalizing that oppression and turning it on themselves), IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER (another one of Daniel Day Lewis’s great performances, and Jim Sheridan’s great direction, that perfectly illustrated the continued oppression in the North) SOME MOTHER’S SON (one of Fionnula Flanagan’s best performances, as well as another Helen Mirren perfect portrayal, in a story about the tragic results of the reborn resistance of the 1960s).

And then watch THE COMMITMENTS for a little comic relief, though with a lot of real political and historical insight nonetheless in a period (the 1990s) just before the Celtic Tiger became a reality and centuries of impoverishment and repression, both from without and within, finally became truly history, and no longer the central reality of Irish life.