(Directed by Ken Loach)
by Kevin Murphy
For my twenty-first birthday my grandfather gave me his front tooth. He’d wrapped it in a blue handkerchief along with a clipped newspaper article and a withered photograph. He smiled gapingly as he handed it to me, shivering in the gray November morning outside the VFW.
He’d lost the tooth in a bar fight earlier that week. That past Thursday, over a couple afternoon brews, Paddy Hurley had stirred controversy by remarking all of Ireland would have been better off had Catholics never become involved in politics. My grandfather, whose sixty five year old body was still solid from years of manual labor, rose to Paddy, his best friend of four decades, and made way for the door.
Something of a trademark, his life was flush with tales of adversity and triumph, of failures made bearable by little victories, and so the tooth, and his presentation of it, made sense in a way that can be understood only when his character gains clarity.
To gain that clarity, it must be known my grandfather’s character, stamped unique by personal idiosyncrasies and temperament, was fashioned by a rich Irish heritage; even then, as he neared the winter of his life, his Irish-ness remained his defining trait, the flower doing battle in the storm.
Broaden that metaphor to encompass Ireland’s history. For years it withstood the storm of British occupation; a small, stubborn country among a vast, powerful empire, Ireland struggled for independence with rascally improvised methods, using the gifts of the land and the treasures of the soul to ward off British artillery. Thousands of men and women sacrificed their property and livelihoods to help the cause. A spirit of rebellion rose from Ireland’s pastures. With it came song. “The mountain glen I’ll seek at morning early/ And join the bold united men, while soft winds shake the barley,” is a line from a ballad describing a man’s decision to leave his beloved for the cause of Irish independence. It is also the ballad from which Ken Loach’s 2006 film takes its title.
The Wind that Shakes the Barley chronicles the events leading into the Irish Civil War. Brothers Teddy and Damian O’Donovan emerge as the film’s dual protagonists, serving their country as volunteers in the Republican army. Teddy heads a section of the army, leading the farmers and masons, the drivers and publicans, with passionate ambition. Damian is set for London and work at a hospital, but after witnessing two gruesome British attacks, his loyalties to his countrymen prove strong enough to keep him in Ireland. Soon enough he’s embroiled in the struggle, sacrificing his own opportunities for a chance at Irish freedom. But the freedom of personal choice has different connotations for a country, and Damian’s actions, beside those of the British occupiers, quickly establish the roles of choice, sacrifice, loyalty and passion as this film’s major themes.
For director Ken Loach, these themes rustle the social commentary of his previous work. From such films as Bread and Roses and television work like Cathy Come Home, Loach has long cast a rueful eye on forgotten, mistreated or misplaced people. He employs a vivid realistic approach to his direction, many of his scenes often appear improvised, while actors are encouraged to be as true to character as possible, so much that Loach is known to adopt first-time performances by inexperienced actors as a means to achieve his vision.
In The Wind that Shakes the Barley, his willingness to improvise, or to encourage rougher performances, enhances the characters’ passion and confusion. Often rattled by a death or a sudden attack, the men and women participating in the Irish rebellion do a bit of yelling. They’re emotional, distraught, many of them starving, and yet they carry on, sustaining on the food of the heart, the matter of the mind, and water poured forth from the soul. With such metaphysical forces propelling their march, it’s no wonder some stumble on their words, or pull their hair with desperation, or kill a fellow Irishman for treason. It’s these very situations though, the seemingly unscripted or fantastic, which lend this film its power. We are not in the company of a film production company and its band of merry actors; no, here we climb Ireland’s rolling green pastures of mud, succumb to the terrible enchantment of war, and by nightfall sing of the camaraderie that’ll keep us warm.
Teddy (Padraic Delaney) is cut from the same rock as Michael Collins. He is a charismatic leader capable of rousing the spirits of the people. Wholeheartedly devoted to Irish freedom, he uses his talents as a soldier to gain a foothold on the British. After many small victories Teddy, along with his brother Damian (Cillian Murphy), are afforded a limited version of the independence they seek. Britain releases a treaty granting freedom to Ireland’s southern states, while keeping the country’s upper six states as British property. To some, including Teddy, this treaty, while not ideal, is the road to complete independence. To others, like Damian, the treaty represents further capitulation to British rule and undermines the integrity of the people. Lines are drawn and divisions prevail; soon it’s brother against brother, the two cast on a different sides of a country heading into civil war. Beyond this compromise is Damian’s immersion and transformation into a full-blown radical. Trading stethoscope for pistol, and leaving his beloved for the war, he characterizes the man from the ballad, the mournful solider for whom Irish independence becomes the ultimate seduction. The Wind that Shakes the Barley examines the intimate struggles of personal choices when the larger, more obvious issues of war invade.
Watching the film, I felt the ping of rebellion, heard the song of revolt; a passionate loyalty to a country I’ve yet to visit burned within. Had I been there, I caught myself saying, I would have fought too. This surprised me, and reminded me of my grandfather. He was a navy man in the Korean War, was often found boxing the ears off one of his buddies, and would have paddled back to Ireland had they called him to serve, but nonetheless he detested violence, considered it silly, more sport than consequence. From his influence, I learned violence’s futility. Why then, I wondered, had I been so quickly moved to fight?
The answer came with memories of my twenty-first.
My grandfather and I entered the VFW. He ordered two beers. It was ten thirty in the morning, but as he usually hit the sack by seven and I was newly of age, the timing seemed perfect. I unwrapped the blue handkerchief; spread before me the photograph, the tooth, and the newspaper article. He leaned towards me, his arm across the bar.
“I figured this out after Paddy ruined my tooth,” he said. “And I figured now that you’re old enough you should know.” We sipped our beers; above the bar the fan spun three rotations.
“This is your heart,” he said, touching the picture. It showed him as a boy, leaning against a car with his father.
“And this is your mind.” The newspaper article described an engineering project he’d successfully completed.
“So what’s with the tooth?” I blurted.
“The tooth?!” he said, curling his fingers into a fist. “The tooth is your passion.”
I chuckled softly.
“No, not making a joke. You see? This is my tooth, ruined on Thursday by Paddy Hurley. Heart. Passion. Mind. Use them when you want, but never let them use you.”
Wise advice proven truer still by my grandfather’s own struggle to follow it.
The Irish rebels could probably relate. Motivated by these same sensibilities, their stressful circumstances often bled into states of confusion.
Passionate, heroic, beautiful and haunting, Ireland and her people have always seemed destined for conflict. But only when the fighting stops can the true character of a complex country come into bloom. The Wind that Shakes the Barley is a picturesque journey into a squalid time of struggle and defeat. And while it fails to provide solutions for current world conflicts, it succeeds in registering the devastation and loss of those now past.
