What We’re Watching: The Wind That Shakes the Barley
by S. Chris Dellas
The Wind That Shakes the Barley was originally an Irish ballad by Robert Dwyer Joyce (1836–1883). It is written from the perspective of a young Irish rebel, detailing his loss of his lover as he went to war to fight the British colonization of the Emerald Isle during the 1798 Irish Rebellion.
The barley reference originated from the fact that Irish rebels carried the grain in their pockets as they faced an overwhelming British army. Barley became a tribute to the fallen rebels in unmarked graves, and each Spring the growth of barley represented their bravery and sacrifice.
In 2006, English filmmaker Ken Loach, whose socialist ideas are often at the forefront of his movies, directed a movie named after the song. The Wind That Shakes the Barley stars Cillian Murphy (Peaky Blinders) and Padraic Delaney and went on to be nominated for several awards including the 2006 Palme d’Or. Loach has always avoided what he calls the absurdity of adventures in major Hollywood movies. He sees more drama in the struggles of working people.
”When some of my movies have been shelved for political reasons, it makes [me] angry… on behalf of the people whose voices weren’t allowed to be heard. When you had trade unions, ordinary rank and file people were never interviewed by television…that’s scandalous.”
The film begins in 1919 in Ireland and brothers Damien (Murphy) and Teddy O’Donovan (Delaney) are playing an innocent game of hurley. The land is mountainous and green as sung in the ballad and we see that the lads do not take competition lightly. They are a tightly knit and tough lot of young men.
The friends offer fond farewells to Damien, as he is off to study to be a doctor in London. It seems a day of hope and good future, full of smiles and brotherhood. Damien is given a good ribbing though as his friends say he must be off to “lick the king’s arse.” Ireland is currently under the occupation of Britain’s Black and Tans and the young men know whose side they are on. They just want to be left alone.
They walk to a familiar farm house occupied by an old grandmother and also in the thatched roof stone house is Sinead, who Damien has likely loved since a boy.
At once a dozen or so Black and Tans assault the men with rifles drawn and shout that all public meetings are banned including their “poxy little games.” The soldiers demand names, addresses, and occupations, suspecting them of being members of the Irish Republican Army. One boy, Michael, answers in the outlawed language of Gaelic and is dragged into a barn and beaten to death in front of the women.
At this precise moment the futures of Damien, his brother, and all of the town’s sons changed. Will there be a trip to England now as foreign chains surround them? Loach is very clear here. There may still be naivete in the young men, but the moral high ground is not arguable to the audience.
Damien almost makes it on the train that will take him to the ship going to London, until the union driver and elderly station guard are beaten with rifle butts by the same group of soldiers who killed Michael, but this time with back-up reinforcements.
Damien, Teddy, and the rest of the town’s young men have no choice but to swear their allegiance to the Irish Republican Army. Loach takes great care to show us the training of young civilian men, armed only with hurley bats and sticks, by slightly older men who have been with the IRA for a while and have seen terrible violence. The lads at first are stumbling and bumbling until their new squad leader shouts to them, “The Brits see ye, they are gonna kill ye! The Brits capture ye, they are gonna kill ye!”
From here on Loach does a fine job with Murphy in the lead showing a group of young, indigenous guerilla fighters who only yesterday were suit and tie wearing young men and women. Almost overnight, they have now become politically as well as militarily motivated.
It helps to understand that from a historical perspective this is not the later conflict in Northern Ireland known as The Troubles, which was often between Protestants and Catholics. Rather, this is a class war between colonialists and local Irish people who have been working the land for centuries.
Loach uses a rather large hammer next to make sure it’s crystal clear that this is a class war, as we are introduced to a local rich landlord named Sir John, who has a very open relationship with the British soldiers.. Sir John’s family has likely owned the land and estate for generations before the rebellion began.
The following skirmishes and then battles Loach presents are shot a tad dark, but are historically accurate. For a 2006 movie, the avoidance of any gratuitous violence or even bloodletting is confusing. When soldiers and IRA are killed they simply fall as if in a post-war John Wayne film. It seems too safe a choice and robs us of some of the horror an audience feels when war is not whitewashed. Make no mistake, the cruelty of the Brits includes torture. They are the bad guys, the oppressors, but a war film without blood is not being completely honest.
The beginning of the second reel explains that the IRA are socialists, and in towns which are their strongholds they hold structured, dignified socialist court proceedings often with women as jurists and landlords seldom winning their cases. The Black and Tan are indeed the enforcers for the landlord class until the formation of the IRA draws heavily armed British troops to enforce the king’s rule: men who have just spent four years doing battle at The Somme. They’re hardened and equipped with more weaponry than the IRA could have ever gotten their hands on, even with some international support.
There is a tender scene in a British garrison’s jail cell as Damien and his now comrades, the train driver and union man, speak in hushed but reverent tones about Michael Collins. Damien asks if the older man had actually seen and heard Collins speak, and once affirmed, Damien begins to quote their version of Lincoln’s Gettysburgh address.
”If you remove the British army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin castle, unless you organize a socialist republic all your efforts will have been in vain.”
The rest of the film illustrates the Irish struggle as a brutal and all out war against the backdrop of a beautiful country, full of working people whose only demand is to be left alone. There are the requisite traitors, sabotages, and heartbreaking executions as a hoped for love affair between Damien and Sinead can never be realized. Their true love is only confirmed in a letter.
The final reel explains the politics in Ireland after the Anglo-Irish treaty is signed. Loach shows us but a glimpse of what could have happened if a true independent socialist government in Ireland had ever taken power. Instead the Irish Civil War follows and the brutality and heartbreak of any civil war, with brother fighting brother, is shown open to watch like a bloody operation from a medical student’s surgical gallery.”
The Wind That Shakes the Barley will be featured soon at Socialist Movie Night.
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