My 406th Review: Emotive, emotional account of two brothers and the early day of modern Eire

Rating: 8/10 (2 May 2011)

TWTSTB is not a difficult film to simply like or admire: it deals with a sensitive subject - the control and abuse by the British of Eire in 1922, the handing over under the Dublin Accord, and the subsequent civil war that occurred.
Rather than going big and sweeping Ken Loach with his normal panache chooses to focus on one family and one community - and the film is better for it - here we get the moral conflict and the hope for a better future through independence.
Ken Loach pulls no punches in depicting the English as arrogant pigs who abuse the locals and their power and show no respect or attempt to befriend anyone: they are cruel, vicious, and sadistic from the off. As nearly all the major critics have pointed out, it's nigh on impossible to see this without drawing analogies to the contemporaneous Iraqi situation - stop and searches, random snatches, even language barriers; however this is a film is that is very much about Ireland and its identity and its values.
Beautifully shot, with excellent production values throughout, the story is compelling, and keeps up a cracking pace throughout - a mixture of action, drama, and politics - it is both uncomfortable viewing, but in its own way, mainstream too.
It really is a film about what price freedom, true freedom and democracy takes - and as an account of history it is excellent.
Ken Loach is not afraid to be honest, and to challenge our comfort zones. This film won the Palm D'or at the Canne Film Festival for good reasons - worth seeing in every way.