BiM Distribuzione
Element Pictures
Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland
Not part of a collection.
The Wind That Shakes the Barley
War has cost them their innocence... Freedom will cost them their blood.
In 1920s Ireland young doctor Damien O'Donovan prepares to depart for a new job in a London hospital. As he says his goodbyes at a friend's farm, British Black and Tans arrive, and a young man is killed. Damien joins his brother Teddy in the Irish Republican Army, but political events are soon set in motion that tear the brothers apart.
- Original title
- The Wind That Shakes the Barley
- Language
- EN
- Country
- IE,GB
- Budget
- $6,500,000
- Revenue
- $22,903,165
CinemaSerf
Mar 26, 2023 · via TMDB
Though quite provocative, I was really disappointed with the anti-British simplicity of this drama. It all centres around two brothers - "Teddy" (Pádraic Delaney) and "Damien" (Cillian Murphy) and the increasingly desperate - and violent - tactics they employed to eject the occupiers from their country. The latter man is not an instant convert to these activities. About to travel to the UK to be a doctor, it's the thuggish squaddies' brutality that convinces him to stay and join his local IRA branch to fight fire with fire. His war-weary brother, on the other hand, is gradually appreciating the stale-mate nature of the predicament and when a settlement is reached between Dublin and London for the "Irish Free State" we find that these siblings are no longer quite on the same side and the conflict turns in on itself. It's not that the British behaved well here, they certainly did not - but the film lacks a key British character to put forward their position. The odious position of Empire, sure, but what, also, of the aspirations of those of a great many Unionists who wanted the status quo and who wanted no truck with the (socialist) republicanism being proposed by "Damien" et al. Again, you can see so much of director Ken Loach's own political persuasion here that he makes no attempt to balance or explain the position from the opposing side, and after a while I found it became a bit of a pontificating rant of a film that illustrated well that expression about one man's terrorist being another's freedom fighter. The then all powerful Catholic church has virtually no role at all here. It's beautifully shot and there are plenty of solid and characterful supporting roles, but no - it could have been better had the director been more interested in offering us more of a objective history rather than his own version of history.
tmdb28039023
Sep 3, 2022 · via TMDB
After watching The Wind That Shakes the Barley, I'm tempted to say that Hollywood ruined Cillian Murphy, but the fact is that this drama written by Paul Laverty and directed by Ken Loach doesn’t really establish, for better or worse, a before and after in the career of the Irish actor; it's more a case of a blind squirrel finding a nut — which is still one more nut than most find (plus, Murphy's range is undeniable, being able to convincingly convey both the most abject cowardice and the most selfless heroism, even within the same film, as he does A Quiet Place Part II). The Irish Republican Army (IRA) is a group whose main characteristic is separation, especially from itself; Loach deals with the original breakup, resulting in the first two iterations the IRA, drawing a parallel with the story of two brothers who feel compelled to put ideology before family because each is convinced they bleed greener than the other. It is said that history repeats itself; first as a tragedy, then as a farce. TWTStB follows this pattern, except that in the end the farce ends up being even more tragic than the tragedy. The first half of the film takes place during the Irish War of Independence, a guerrilla war waged between 1919 and 1921 between the IRA and the British occupation forces in Ireland (which included Irish Unionists and Protestants, in contrast to Catholic Republicans). The second part takes place during the Irish Civil War (1922-1923) which immediately followed the Anglo-Irish Treaty which resulted in the creation of the Irish Free State. Many of those who fought on both sides of the conflict had been members of the IRA during the War of Independence. The bitter irony is that an English character more or less foretells this when he says: "God save Ireland if ever the [Irish republicans] take control." I'm making it sound like a history class, but TWTStB is far from it; indeed, there is a lesson here, but it is a timeless and universal moral about the fratricidal nature of all wars. Loach and Laverty make their protagonists, Damien (Murphy) and Teddy O'Donovan (Pádraic Delaney) biological brothers to emphasize that all men — Irish and Irish, or even, why not, Irish and English — are brothers and, as As Donne said, "the death of any man diminishes me" because "no man is an island." Now, just because their characters are symbolic archetypes doesn't mean that Murphy and Delaney just stand there holding signs that say "Cain" and "Abel"; the former in particular turns in a performance in which we can find shades of Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia.
Andres Gomez
Sep 27, 2013 · via TMDB
Intense drama about Ireland's independence from the UK and the ultimate reasons for the need of freedom.
User reviews courtesy of TMDB.
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Cillian Murphy
Damien
Pádraic Delaney
Teddy
Liam Cunningham
Dan
Orla Fitzgerald
Sinead
Damien Kearney
Finbar
Frank Bourke
Leo
Aidan O'Hare
Steady Boy
Shane Casey
Kevin
Keith Dunphy
Terence
Noel O'Donovan
Station Guard
Frank O'Sullivan
Man in Pub
Roger Allam
Sir John Hamilton
William Ruane
Johnny Gogan
Sean McGinley
Father Denis
Denis Conway
Priest
Antony Byrne
Interrogator
William Armstrong
British Soldier
Alex Dee
British Soldier
Colin Parry
British Soldier
Siobhán McSweeney
Julia (uncredited)
Philip Wright
Man (uncredited)
Fergus Clegg
Production Design
Barry Ackroyd
Director of Photography
Marc Cass
Stunt Coordinator
Ken Loach
Director
Kahleen Crawford
Casting
Andrew Lowe
Executive Producer
Ed Guiney
Executive Producer
Gerardo Herrero
Producer
George Fenton
Original Music Composer
Paul Laverty
Screenplay
Life After Life
In Other Words
Healer
Algeria in Flames
Fireflies at El Mozote
American History X
Ikiru
Apocalypse Now
Gladiator
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
There Will Be Blood
Ran
Lawrence of Arabia
We Won't Go to the Woods Anymore
Autumn Sonata
Jean Moulin, une affaire française
A Dublin Story
The Phoney War
La Tragédie des Brigades Internationales
Desa Drohulu
MOON SAGA - Mysteries of Yoshitsune I
Downfall
1900
A Matter of Life and Death
The Leopard
Memoirs of a Geisha
The Last Samurai
Sweet Smell of Success
The Sea Inside
Beasts of No Nation
Spartacus
Au Revoir les Enfants
The Man Who Would Be King
Mulan: Rise of a Warrior
Neckan
School for Danger
Irena's Vow
This Is England
Dawn of the Damned
Scarface
The Remains of the Day
A Better Tomorrow
Kes
Lord of War
Dirty Dancing
The Breath
Dead Man Walking
A Man for All Seasons
Lovers of the Arctic Circle
Brothers
Holiday
Lust, Caution
The Commitments
Bloody Sunday
The Secret Scripture
Chimes at Midnight
Is Paris Burning?
Irreversible
Becket
The Darjeeling Limited
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
Straw Dogs
Law of Desire
Last Life in the Universe
Gallipoli
Ghost World
Benny & Joon
Me and You and Everyone We Know
State of Grace
Part of the Game
Monarch
The Duchess
Paradise Now
Michael Collins
Solino
Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner
A Canterbury Tale
Dark Victory
Salvador (Puig Antich)
Brothers
Love Story
Bad Lucky Goat
Miracle in the Woods
Before We Go
Seeking Sun Paths
The War Boy
Dark Blue Almost Black
The Bodyguard
Exodus
Van Gogh
Bottle Rocket
Prick Up Your Ears
Bring Them Down
The Sky Crawlers
Traitor
The Strange Ones
Last Night
The Four Feathers
Sunshine Cleaning
Flesh + Blood
For Whom the Bell Tolls
The Assassination of Richard Nixon
The Man Who Fell to Earth
Ceylon
Warrior Awang and Master Tok Gajah
The Snapper
The Principal
Along the Sungari River
Lili Marleen
To End All Wars
The Van
The Whip and the Body
The Living and the Dead
Journey's End
Brother in Every Inch
Willenbrock
Inventing the Abbotts
The Suicide Theory
Red Dawn
Catch a Fire
The Vicious Kind
Agnes Browne
Fat Girl
The Devil's Own
Charlotte Gray
The Man Who Cried
Agnes and His Brothers
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The Legend of Rita
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Vanity Fair
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Me and My Sister
The Good and the Bad
The Tiger's Tail
Schizo
The Path
Last Days
Paul and Michelle
Angel
Feeling Minnesota
Revolution
Gypo
Dead of Summer
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Snipers Valley
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My Life for Ireland
Sin Sisters
Perfect
Broken Windows
Last Exit (the underground film)
Camino a la libertad
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Space Raiders
Empire of Dirt
This Is Nicholas: Living with Autism Spectrum Disorder
Broken
She Island
Sahel: Pátria ou Morte
Legionario
Paths of Glory
Braveheart
In the Name of the Father
The Bridge on the River Kwai
All Quiet on the Western Front
A Streetcar Named Desire
Beasts of No Nation
The Longest Day
The Six Triple Eight
The Irishman
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Empire of the Sun
Rebel Without a Cause
East of Eden
Richard Jewell
Scarface
The Last of the Mohicans
Zulu
Darkest Hour
Gangs of New York
Lion of the Desert
Brothers
The Guns of Navarone
13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi
The Patriot
The Duellists
The King
The Siege of Jadotville
Birdy
Savior
Belfast
The Scarlet and the Black
Hidden Agenda
Hope and Glory
Michael Collins
Defiance
The Informer
The Young Lions
Kill the Irishman
Danny Boy
A Call to Spy
The Last Rifleman
Jimmy's Hall
Battleground
The War
Heaven & Earth
Dark of the Sun
The Last Valley
The Charge of the Light Brigade
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The Indian Runner
Jacknife
King Arthur
Waiting for Anya
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