Автор: Valerie Howes

At Cannes, The Wind That Shakes the Barley received a ten-minute standing ovation, not to mention the Palme d'Or. Back in Britain, the film received a toasting from the right-wing press. "Why DOES Ken Loach loathe his country so much?" asked the Daily Mail while Simon Heffer of the Telegraph described the film as "poisonous" and "repulsive."

"A couple of the columnists hadn't even seen the movie when they wrote these totally short, headline pieces," says lead actor Cillian Murphy, who plays IRA volunteer Damien. And historical accuracy, he adds, was not even the issue.

The Wind That Shakes the Barley follows an Irish Republican Army flying column waging guerrilla warfare on British soldiers—or the Black and Tans as the latter were known back in 1920. It gets ugly. In a setting of rolling, hilly countryside rendered mystical and at the same time ominous by lingering fogs, the British soldiers charge in to verbally humiliate the population, ban traditional pastimes, burn down houses, torture prisoners and carry out summary executions. "No one has contested that the Black and Tans didn't carry out these atrocities … that it wasn't organized terror that they carried out in Cork," says Murphy.

Indeed, alongside the sound technicians and make-up artists you'd expect to find on a film set, a historical advisor from the nearest University was working hard to ensure all the details rang true. As well as overseeing the mise-en-scene and script, the advisor was kept on hand to help the actors contextualize their characters' actions. "I'd call him if I had questions," says Murphy, "if I wanted to know things like what would be influencing the choices that the characters were making; what the political climate was in Europe. At the time there was a lot of very radical literature coming out in Europe, and the stuff that was happening in Russia was appalling."

Murphy did his own research too before filming: reading the biographies of IRA volunteers who fought in the War of Independence, to better understand the mindset of his character. He referred to On Another Man's Wound, by Ernie O'Malley; like Murphy's character, Damien, O'Malley was a doctor and a revolutionary. "This man talks about reconciling the violence—and having to shoot somebody—when all you're trying to do is save lives," explains Murphy. The actor also drew insight from Guerrilla Days in Ireland, by Tom Barry. "Barry was a leader of one of the flying columns in Cork and he had been in the British army. He'd learned about tactics in the British army so he could use that against them when he came back home."

In spite of the historical accuracy of the facts underpinning The Wind That Shakes the Barley, it should come as no surprise that some in Britain have found the film hard to stomach. For decades in the UK, people have seen news images of the aftermath of pub bombings, letter bombings, shopping centre bombings, and even fish and chip shop bombings carried out by the modern incarnation of the IRA and designed to kill and maim civilians on both sides of the Irish Sea.

Yet they have not heard all the facts and voices in the debate over Ireland. In 1988, the Irish Republican Army, the Irish National Liberation Army, the Ulster Defence Association and Sinn Féin were all banned from the British broadcast media. (Even when Sinn Féin won the Irish elections in 1989, their victory speeches could not be heard on the British news.) Margaret Thatcher explained that to revoke those groups' freedom to speak was to protect our freedom to live.

In the Ryerson Review of Journalism, Liza Finlay points out that the ban was quickly extended to cover a larger set of individuals deemed to be "sympathizers" too. This new group included U.S. author Margie Bernard and Brighton Labour councillor Richard Stanton (because they had spoken out against the original broadcast ban) as well as Irish band, The Pogues (because their song, "Streets of Sorrow" suggests that some IRA prisoners had been set up by the British police). Such censorship may have been justified as a means of cutting off "the oxygen of publicity" from violent groups, but it has also stifled democratic debate and allowed new generations in Britain the freedom to live in blissful ignorance of their own country's dark track record in Ireland.

Although the facts of Loach's film may be solid, his approach to tackling the story shows indisputable bias. Times critic, James Christopher, although he gives the film a four-star rating, says of the director, "his view of the colonial Brits as greedy, swaggering sadists is unhindered by a single complimentary frame." In the Daily Mail, columnist Ruth Dudley writes, "since he was first radicalized in the 1960s, he has made it his life's work to promulgate a Marxist view of the class war, to humanize the people at the bottom of the social heap and to demonize everyone else."

Murphy defends Loach's decision to focus primarily on Irish brothers Damien and Teddy, in this story. "When you're making a film, you have to take a point of view, otherwise it's not drama. What Ken does in this film is he manages to mix beautifully the human and the political, in this case it is the story of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances."

"I don't think that scene at the top of the hill where I shoot a 16-year-old [informer] is glorification of the IRA," Murphy adds. "Similarly, I think that when we're all arrested, you see that all those men [the British soldiers] who have just come back from the Somme are devastated to arrive home to no jobs, and so when they get sent to Ireland, they run amok."

Asked if he sees the film as in some way enlightening the public about the new terrorist problems Britain faces today, Murphy visibly flinches. "I don't think you can compare al Qaeda with what was going on in Ireland. What you have to realize is how this resistance came about. There was an election in 1918 in which Sinn Féin won seventy-three seats out of 105, it was the last all-out, all-British election. Sinn Fein won a huge majority and had a mandate from the Irish people, so they set up a parliament and that parliament was then banned. And any one who talked with the parliament was sent to jail. All the newspapers were banned, games, speaking Irish was banned. All democratic routes were closed off to these people, so then they took up arms. It's a very, very different situation from what exists today."

Murphy does hope that people will be inspired to look deeper into the politics of the past that have shaped the Irish situation. "I think that with this film, it may make people wish to take up a history book or try looking beyond propaganda. It should kind of nudge you towards thinking about things, but in a subtle way."