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The Wind That Shakes The Barley
Directed by	Ken Loach
Produced by	Rebecca O'Brien
Written by	Paul Laverty
Starring	Cillian Murphy Orla Fitzgerald Padraic Delaney Liam Cunningham
Music by	George Fenton
Release date(s)	18 May 2006 (premiere at Cannes) 23 June 2006 07 September 2006 21 September 2006 14 March 2007 (limited)
Running time	127 min
Language	English, Irish
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

The Wind That Shakes the Barley is a 2006 Ken Loach film set during the Irish War of Independence (1919–21) and the subsequent Irish Civil War (1922–3). Written by long-time Loach collaborator Paul Laverty, this drama tells the story of two County Cork brothers, played by Cillian Murphy and Pádraic Delaney, who join the Irish Republican Army to fight for Irish independence from Great Britain.

Widely praised, the film won the Palme d'Or at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. Loach's biggest box office success to date,^[1] the film did well around the world and set a record in Ireland as the highest-grossing Irish-made independent film ever.^[2]

Contents 1 Plot 2 Production 3 Cast 4 Distribution 5 Reception 6 References 7 External links

The neutrality of this section is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page. This section has been tagged since December 2007.

It is 1920, and young doctor Damien O'Donovan (Murphy) is about to leave Ireland to work in a London teaching hospital. Meanwhile, his brother Teddy (Delaney) is a ranking member of the Irish Republican Army. However, after witnessing the bayoneting of a close friend by British Auxiliaries and the railway union's resistance to the British Army, Damien decides to stay and fight back. He then joins the IRA in a guerrilla war against the British Army, the Royal Irish Constabulary, and the Crown's paramilitary forces (The Black and Tans and the Auxiliary Division).

After a wealthy Anglo-Irish landowner coerces one of his servants into betraying the IRA, the entire Brigade is arrested by the British Army. Teddy is singled out and brutally tortured by having his fingernails ripped out. Locked in a cell together, Damien and the rest of his men sing The Soldier's Song to keep up his courage. A young British soldier of Irish descent later helps them escape, except for three men who are later executed.

After the IRA's intelligence network reveals their espionage activities, the landowner and his servant are both taken hostage and taken up to a cottage in the mountains. After the deaths of the three IRA prisoners, Damien receives orders to "execute the spies." Despite the fact that the servant, Chris Reilly, is a childhood friend, Damien personally guns down both hostages with a revolver. He says ruefully, "I hope this new Ireland we're fighting for is worth it." Later, he describes to his sweetheart, IRA message runner Sinéad Sullivan (Orla Fitzgerald), about having to face Chris Reilly's mother. Devastated, he tells Sinéad, "I can't feel anything."

After Damien and Teddy's unit ambushes and slaughters an armed convoy of the Auxiliary Division, another detachment of "Auxies" attacks and burns the farmhouse of Sinéad's family. Sinéad is held at gunpoint while her head is shaved with a pair of sheep shears. Damien is restrained by Teddy and can only watch. Later, as Damien lovingly comforts the traumatised Sinéad, a messenger arrives with news of a formal ceasefire between Britain and the IRA.

As celebrations break out in the village, Damien and Sinéad prepare for their life together. However, when the terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty are announced in 1921, Damien and Teddy suddenly find themselves pitted against each another. Teddy, for whom the Irish War of Independence has never been personal, wishes for everyone to support peace. At one point he tells Damien, "We'll tear up the Treaty as soon as we're strong enough, but I need you with me on this."

Meanwhile, Damien is an adherent of the Socialist ideology formulated by James Connolly and has always viewed the war with Britain as an example of class struggle. He declares that the Treaty is not what he has fought for, and that it will only change "the accents of the powerful and colour of the flag." He further declares that by accepting the Treaty and swearing an oath of allegiance to the King of England, Teddy has wrapped himself up in the Union Jack -- "The Butcher's Apron."

After hostilities break out in Dublin between the Irish Free State forces and the Anti-Treaty IRA, Damien and his fellow Anti-Treaty comrades commence hit-and-run tactics against the new Irish Army. Meanwhile, Teddy expresses fear that the British will return if the new Irish government is perceived to be weak. He decrees, "They take one, we take one back. To Hell with the Courts." This is the beginning of the Irish Civil War and the men in uniform are now fellow Irishmen.

At the climax of the film, Damien is captured during a raid for arms on a Free State barracks and is sentenced to be executed by the Irish Army. As he awaits the firing squad in the same cell where the British had imprisoned them earlier, Teddy pays him a visit. He tells Damien of his dream of building a free Ireland where they can both raise families in peace and prosperity. He pleads with Damien to reveal where the IRA is hiding the stolen weapons, offering him full amnesty. Damien responds, "Now you listen to me. I shot Chris Reilly in the heart. I am not going to sell out." After Teddy leaves his cell in tears, Damien sits down to write his final letter to Sinéad, saying, "I tried not to get into this war, and did, and now I tried to get out, and can't."

At dawn the next morning, Damien is marched before a Free State firing squad with his head held high. The squad's commander, a devastated Teddy, tells Damien that it's still not too late. Damien asks, "For you or for me?"

The rifles blaze and Damien crumples to the ground. Teddy unties the body and cradles his little brother in his arms, weeping bitterly.

Later, Teddy arrives at the Sullivan farm to deliver his brother's final letter and cherished St. Christopher medal to Sinéad. Angrily rejecting Teddy's attempts to comfort her, a grief stricken Sinéad screams and sobs as she reads Damien's letter. Teddy quietly leaves the farm on his motorbike, a broken man.

Although it is focused on Irish history and identity and stars mostly Irish actors, the film was made by British director Loach and was an international co-production between companies in Ireland, the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain and France.

The title derives from the song of the same name, "The Wind That Shakes the Barley," by 19th century author Robert Dwyer Joyce. The song made the phrase "the wind that shakes the barley" a motif in Irish Republican song and poetry. National University of Ireland, Cork historian Donal O Drisceoil was Loach's historical adviser on the film.

The film was shot in various towns within County Cork during 2005. Some filming took place in Bandon, County Cork: a scene was shot along North Main Street and outside a building next to the Court House (it was from Lee’s Hotel in Bandon (now the Munster Arms) on August 22, 1922. This choice of location may be significant,^{[citation needed]} as Michael Collins set off on the fateful journey that ended in his death at the hands of Anti-Treaty IRA at Béal na mBláth ('The Pass of the Flowers'), about 8 miles away. The ambush scene was shot on the mountains around Ballyvorney while the farmhouse scenes were filmed in Coolea.^{[citation needed]}

Many of the extras in the film were drawn from local Scout groups,^[3] including Bandon, Togher and Macroom with veteran Scouter Martin Thompson in an important role. Many of the British Soldiers seen in the film were played by members of the Irish Army Reserve, from local units.

Amongst the songs on the film's soundtrack is "Oró Sé do Bheatha 'Bhaile", an Irish Jacobite song whose lyrics the nationalist leader Pádraig Pearse changed to focus upon republican themes.

• Cillian Murphy - Damien
• Pádraic Delaney - Teddy
• Liam Cunningham - Dan
• Orla Fitzgerald - Sinead
• Mary Murphy - Bernadette
• Mary O'Riordan - Peggy
• Laurence Barry - Micheail

The commercial interest expressed in the United Kingdom was initially much lower than in other European countries and only 30 prints of the film were planned for distribution in the UK, compared with 300 in France. However, after the Palme d'Or award the film appeared on 105 screens in the UK.

The RESPECT political party, of which Ken Loach is on the national council, called for people to watch the film on its first weekend in order to persuade the film industry to show the film in more cinemas.^[4]

The reaction from film critics has generally been positive. The conservative Daily Telegraph's film critic described it as a "brave, gripping drama" and said that director Loach was "part of a noble and very English tradition of dissent"^[5]. A Times film critic said that the film showed Loach "at his creative and inflammatory best"^[6], and rated it as 4 out of 5. The Daily Record of Scotland gave it a positive review (4 out of 5), describing it as "a dramatic, thought-provoking, gripping tale that, at the very least, encourages audiences to question what has been passed down in dusty history books."^[7]

The film was attacked by some commentators, some of whom hadn't seen it, including Simon Heffer.^[8] Following the Cannes prize announcement, Irish Historian Ruth Dudley Edwards wrote in the Daily Mail on 30 May 2006 that Loach's political viewpoint "requires the portrayal of the British as sadists and the Irish as romantic, idealistic resistance fighters who take to violence only because there is no other self-respecting course,"^[9] and attacked his career in an article containing inaccuracies.^[10] The following week, Edwards continued her attack in The Guardian, admitting that her first article was written without seeing the film (which at that stage had only been shown at Cannes), and asserting that she would never see it "because I can't stand its sheer predictability."^[11] One day after Edwards' initial article appeared, Tim Luckhurst of The Times called the movie a "poisonously anti-British corruption of the history of the war of Irish independence" and went so far as to compare Loach to Nazi propagandist director Leni Riefenstahl.^[12] Yet George Monbiot revealed on 6 June, also in The Guardian, that the production company had no record of Luckhurst having attended a critic's screening of the as-yet unreleased film, and Luckhurst refused to comment.^[13] Trinity College Dublin historian Brian Hanley made the criticism that the film ignored the IRA's sectarianism of the protestant community.^[14]

One strain of commentary in Ireland examined the Irish War of Independence as a socialist or class based conflict, as well as a nationalist uprising.^[15] The film has also re-generated debate on rival versions of Irish history.^[14]

• The Wind That Shakes the Barley at the Internet Movie Database
• The Wind That Shakes the Barley Official UK Site
• The Wind That Shakes the Barley Official US Site
• Interview with Ken Loach about the film from Socialist Worker, 10th June 2006
• "Wind that Shakes the Barley: A historically accurate film" review in The Militant
• Introduction to The Wind That Shakes the Barley script by Luke Gibbons, see also Gibbons reply to Kevin Myers
• The Wind That Shakes the Barley at Rotten Tomatoes
• debate about the accuracy and political significance of the film

v • d • e Ken Loach
1960s	Poor Cow · Kes
1970s	The Save the Children Fund Film · Family Life · Black Jack
1980s	The Gamekeeper  · Looks and Smiles · Which Side Are You On?
1990s	Fatherland · Hidden Agenda · Riff-Raff · Raining Stones · Ladybird Ladybird · Land and Freedom · A Contemporary Case for Common Ownership · Carla's Song · The Flickening Flame · My Name Is Joe
2000s	Bread and Roses · The Navigators · Sweet Sixteen · Ae Fond Kiss... · Tickets · The Wind That Shakes the Barley

Preceded by L'Enfant

Palme d'Or 2006

Succeeded by 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days