The Wind that Shakes the Barley (Clay Theater; Pacific Heights). If this film by Ken Loach, English and Marxist (is that a dubious proposition?)filmmaker and Paul Laverty, veteran Screenwriter does not receive an Academy Award Nomination for BEST "foreign" film of 2007, there is no justice in Hollywood. It won the Palme D'Or at Cannes in 2006, and with good reason.
On Tuesday, April 17, 2007, I accompanied a short story writer/San Francisco native, Mark, to the Landmark Clay theater, Pacific Heights, on the very day a solemn vigil was being held in Virginia. A sociopathic, mass murderer (23-year-old Cho), filled with self-hatred and self-absorption, had slaughtered 33 students and faculty members of Virginia Tech wearing a maroon beret, and expertly wielding a 22 rifle and 9 millimeter gun. The nation was reeling!
It was a cool, sunny day and when I stood in line for the film WIND...I was expecting just another polemic of how the English abused the Irish, County Cork, 1920's. What I experienced was a profoundly passionate immersion into a personalized feud between 2 brothers, which humanizes a bloody chapter in the British imperial divide-and-conquer mentality, system imposed on the fledgling Irish Free State.
Cillian Murphy, as Damien, is brilliantly transcendent as an idealist, a romantic, who literally stick to his guns and to hell with the consequences! He plays a medical student on his way back to London when he witnesses an atrocity committed by the British occupying forces on a train platform. The Irish engineer refuses to drive the train with British soldiers on board. FATE intervenes, Damien ends up missing the train, and ends up swearing an oath to the Irish Republican Army. He joins a ragtag guerrilla gang led by his younger brother, Teddy (Padraic Delaney). In Loach's artful hands, injustice is no simplistic matter.
In a pivotal scene that cuts to the core of the movie's vise-like grip on our emotions, Murphy's Damien is grieving for a deed he has not yet committed. He is about to shoot a childhood friend in the heart for betraying the rebels. With agonized body language, Murphy conveys all the horrendous, irreparable damage of war, and then adds bluntly: "I studied anatomy for five years. Now I'm going to shoot Chris Reilly in the heart. I hope this Ireland we're fighting for is worth it."
The movie sure as hell is! In fact, it requires a second viewing, especially if there are cellphones lighting up during the infamous torture scene (not as successful as it could have been). I complained and received another ticket. I suggest you do the same if signs are NOT posted and you are distracted.
The film is riveting and highly recommended. Mr. Roach peoples his film with superb luminous actors. We ask ourselves this profound question: Is Damien an egotistical, narcissistic monster, or a tragic martyr? Is that distinction capacious?
As a friend recently opined, a strict definition of a martyr is someone who bears witness. Nowadays, reversedly, to bear witness is to be a martyr: a new, contemporary formula.
See the film! It brilliantly depicts with brutal honesty, English, actually British, acts of violence but also the often heartless tactics of the IRA. Why? Because there is nothing like an inventive, nuanced film to lift you out of the real world!
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