‘The Wind that Shakes the Barley’ is the latest addition to that small, but gallant, band of movies that depict Gaelic games as an important part of the narrative, writes An Fear Rua …

‘Rooney’, however, it ain’t.

Ken Loach’s film is set in West Cork during the years 1920 to ’22. Through the story of two brothers and their friends, in a small rural community, it traces the evolution of events from the Anglo Irish war to the Civil War.

It opens with a robust and lively hurling match that looks and sounds reasonably authentic, played in a patch of bright green grass surrounded by high mountains and gorse bushes. Given the setting, and that we are in West Cork, a football match might have been more authentic. However, Loach may have been keen to introduce his audience to the hurley, since it features later in the film as a mock weapon used by IRA members in training and drilling.

The film then moves to an extended sequence of extremely brutality – including the murder of one of the hurlers – by Black and Tans and Auxiliary cadets. It seems to AFR that this aspect is not overly exaggerated. An Fear Rua was once acquainted with a man whom the Tans tied to the back of one of their lorries and who was dragged along the road for several miles as a form of torture. AFR knew another man whose brother the Tans murdered in Kilkenny jail while he was being tortured during interrogation.

There are a number of key scenes in the film. Those of AFR’s readers who are of a squeamish nature about knowing how the film ends should now look away. An early sequence where the Tans attack a family, brutalise them and burn their house is repeated towards the end of the film. Same family. Same house. Perhaps a little less brutality. Except this time, the brutalisers wear the uniform of the Free State army. This seems to be Loach’s way of visualising Connolly’s famous warning to the Citizen Army on the eve of Easter Week 1916: after the battle hold on to your weapons, because if we do not achieve a socialist republic we will have done nothing except exchange the crown for the harp and changed the colour of the post boxes from red to green…

The next important scene is on a hillside in West Cork where Damien O’Donovan (one of two brothers) – the film’s hero – executes Chris Reilly, a member of the IRA who has been condemned as an informer. As he walks towards Chris and primes the pistol, he mutters ‘I hope this Republic we’re fighting for is worth it!’.

Cinematically, there is a marvellous scene where the terms of Treaty are explained using the device of a cinema audience watching a contemporary newsreel. Afterwards, there is a prolonged debate on the Treaty by all the film’s main characters. As you listen to the critics of the Treaty outlining its faults, you realise – with the benefit of eighty years of hindsight, of course - that effectively the deficiencies they outline have all been remedied. Ireland is now a fully independent, sovereign and democratic state with at least a process in place whereby a united Ireland by agreement could take place.

Collins may have pointed out the stepping-stones, but Dev was the man who walked over them.

The final noteworthy scene is one where Damien’s brother, Teddy – now a Free State officer – commands the firing squad that executes him. As Damien slumps forward, you think of his own words on the hillside before the killing of Chris Reilly: ‘I hope this Republic we’re fighting for is worth it!’. Clearly, his own brother thought it was worth enough that he was prepared to execute him.

So, in a peculiar way, the film’s main early scenes under British rule are echoed, this time under Irish rule, but slightly re-worked. In AFR’s view, far from re-inforcing his critique of the failure to achieve a socialist republic, Loach inadvertently up scuttles the core of his own argument. Teddy O’Donovan’s willingness to oversee his own brother’s killing is testimony to the determination of men like Collins and Griffith and their conviction that what they were doing was best for Ireland.

The standard of acting is high. The film is beautifully staged and shot. Tourism is West Cork will benefit no end if the film achieves a wide international audience. However, it suffers from a number of scenes that are wordy and excessively didactic - particularly those involving the incongruous ‘Jem Larkin’ Dublin socialist train driver who joins the flying column. These scenes drag and hold up the film’s action. Focussing the film on a small, claustrophobic, rural community exacerbates this sense.

In the end, though, whatever its faults, you have to remind yourself that this is fiction not history. Personally, AFR much preferred Neil Jordan’s ‘Michael Collins’. Even though, clearly, Jordan cut some historical corners quite spectacularly, the bigger budget, the bigger stars all contrast with the ‘parish drama group’ feel of Loach’s lesser budget oeuvre.

‘Collins’ may not have been such great history, but it was much better cinema …

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Shakin’ the barley … in Monaghan