The Wind That Shakes the Barley, directed by Ken Loach, written by Paul Laverty
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Ultimately, The Wind That Shakes the Barley confronts the viewer as a highly contradictory work. On the one hand, Loach, because of his one-time association with the revolutionary socialist movement and his ongoing commitment to problems of working class life and consciousness, continues to treat subjects and themes that few other filmmakers approach. Among more serious elements in the international film world, he continues to enjoy a reputation as a highly principled individual. The attacks of the right-wing media in Britain are not accidental or in any way misplaced. They have reason to be hostile to Loach's work in general and his Irish film in particular.
However, his political and artistic limitations ultimately restrict every one of his ventures. The Wind That Shakes the Barley, like other Loach films, seems to hanker after traditional workers' organisations that have collapsed, and betrays a lack of critical insight into the programmatic basis for these failures. Their collapse, including the end of the Soviet Union and the devastating degeneration of the labour movement internationally, has presented every filmmaker on the "left" with a new and complicated situation.
Loach may have responded better than most, but a film like this one exposes all that has not been worked through. Without this, sincerity and sympathy for the working class is not enough to carry him through to artistic success. Adding to the difficulties, Loach's naturalistic, quasi-improvisational method is proving increasingly inadequate for tackling the most complex historical and ideological problems. One is gripped by parts of this film, left quite cold and unconvinced by others.
Given the obvious parallels between the British occupation of Ireland and the contemporary situation in Iraq, with a radicalisation under way within broad layers of the population, the making of The Wind That Shakes the Barley could and perhaps should have been a major political-artistic event, genuinely affecting and helping to educate a new generation of young people in particular. That it is not is due first and foremost to the film industry's efforts to bury Loach's work, but his film's unclarified and unresolved elements also play a role.
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full: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/oct2006/loac-o11.shtml
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Colin Brace
Amsterdam