A subtle and honest account the Irish Republic's genesis.

Rating: 8/10 (20 November 2008)

When it was released, The Hand That Shakes The Barley garnered all-to-predictable condemnation from several right-of-centre commentators. They concentrated on the film's portrayal of the notorious Black and Tan mercenaries as ruthless, sadistic and murderous - well - mercenaries, decried Loach's film as a treacherous attack on Britain, his mother country, and generally wrote the film off as worthless leftist propaganda. Well, whether wilfully or not, they miss the point entirely.
Loach has produced a far more subtle film, and it is a film which demands a more considered response. It doesn't help that Loach has a reputation as an uncompromising left filmmaker, and many feel that rules him out from the start. But given Loach's politics, The Wind does not take easy shots. The ruthlessness of the Black and Tan is a matter of record, as is England's shameful history of brutal repression in Ireland from the days of Elizabeth I on. And anyone who feels such points, whenever they are made, are merely pro-Irish, anti-English propaganda should be asked to explain English brutality in the Highland Clearances. Why, not an Irishman in sight.
As for The Wind That Shakes The Barley, Loach's approach is never as broad-brush as his critics claim. For example, the Black and Tans are ruthless, and shown to be brutal, but Loach has one character, an English officer, indicate obliquely just why: after spending four years fighting in the Great War trenches and seeing comrades slaughtered, it is not surprising that they should have become brutalised. This does not justify their behaviour, but does to some extent offer an explanation.
Loach also has one Black and Tan trooper, revolted by what he is part off, help Irish republican soldiers escape and then join them.
More tellingly, the film's earlier scenes of Black and Tan behaviour is juxtaposed with equally nasty behaviour by Free State troops against their own when, after the Treaty is signed. the tragic civil war pitched brother against brother.
Loach is also admirably more even-handed than his critics would allow in his exposition of the dilemma faced by Ireland: should they settle for what is on offer, a Free State and pledging allegiance to the English Crown now and pursue a longer-term strategy for gaining complete independence? Or should the reject this pragmatic compromise and carry on the fight until they have achieved complete independence? This is the dilemma which split the country in two and which saw the murder of Michael Collins as a man regarded by the more purist republicans as a patsy who, seduced by the good living in his Knightsbridge, London, headquarters, had sold out to the English.
Loach's even-handed approach has him (and his excellent scriptwriter Paul Laverty) have a character, the one brother, spell out Britain's own dilemma: if they allow full independence to Ireland (and even the more limited concessions Lloyd George and Winston Churchill made to Collins took the Irish by surprise), they would be inviting trouble form their other dominions - Canada, Australia, New Zealand and India - which legitimately ask 'if the Irish, then why not us, too?' (One might or might not like what the British Empire was and represented, but any honest man is bound to concede that that was a hell of a political dilemma. From the English point of view, the substance of the Treaty was the wisest course of action.) As for the film itself, Loach, who apparently always works on a shoestring, does well. The cinematography is up to the standard of some of the best high budget Hollywood and Bollywood films, and the acting is without exception top-notch. My guess is that the actors were also, to some, extent spurred on to give such moving performances by the tragic subject matter of the script.
One, very silly reviewer (in Britain's Daily Telegraph) described this as more or less a soap opera which gave a mawkish portrayal of rural Irish life. Don't believe a word of it. There is nothing sentimental or mawkish here. Instead, there are several quite outstanding and powerful scenes: when an English landlord is executed and then his stable-hand, a youth the IRA have known all their lives, is also shot; when the pragmatic IRA commander sets free a greedy businessman, who is bilking a pensioner and has been temporarily jailed by a Republican state court, because the IRA needs his money to buy weapons; the debate between the two factions which follows that scene; the sermon by the parish priest who despairs as to what is going on in his country, only to see the more hard-line, purist republicans walk out of church; the scene where the one brother pleads with his harder line brother to co-operate and save himself from the firing squad.
Finally, what is telling is that Loach does not come down on the side of either brother. From the point of view of the Irish, both courses of action - take what's on offer or fight on for more - were legitimate.
The tragedy was that the Irish nation tore itself apart over which course of action to take. Wisely and honestly, Loach concedes that neither faction had right on its side and to have pretended otherwise would have diminished this film gravely. For the record and in view of what other reviewers claim, I don't feel Loach sided with anyone.
I often make the point that there are films which win us over and whose flaws and slight faults we are thus inclined to overlook. Then there are films which, for whatever reason, fail to win us over and whose flaws and slight faults count all the more against them. The Wind That Shakes The Barley won me - and Englishman and by no means 'of the left' - over entirely. It is more subtle than similar work and an intelligent and moving account of the tragic early years of the Irish Republic.