MUBI

“Le vent se lève” n’est pas une grande fresque historique hollywoodienne et c’est peut-être pour cela qu’il désarçonne quelque peu le spectateur. C’est un film plutôt intimiste et allégorique qui montre cette période par le prisme d’un village, d’une famille et de deux frères qui s’entredéchirent à l’image des Irlandais entre eux. C’est un film aux plans larges et lents, composé de deux parties (avant et après l’occupation anglaise) qui se font échos pour mieux nous questionner : les exactions anglaises prennent une autre dimension quand les mêmes exactions (aux mêmes endroits) sont commis par les Irlandais entre eux. Un point de vue qui permet d’éviter le manichéisme facile. Reste que le film est teinté d’un certain classicisme, parfois aride et complexe qui nous fera regretter certainement ses films plus sociaux et plus coups de poings. Les personnages ne sont pas tous très convaincants, l’histoire prend le dessus sur les hommes, ce qui est un peu dommage chez Loach.

(December 2007)

“I didn’t knew what to expect. Never saw a Ken Loach movie before. I don’t want to talk about the direction, nor the script, nor the damn photography. I don’t think that we can separate these things in a movie… though is very normal that people do so. They didn’t even read the script but “The Script is awesome”… come on. It would be like seeing a painting and say “Wow, the scratch is awesome”. Now, if you say the story is good… it’s another thing. So, I’ll say about the film in its wholeness… its unity, its oneness and my feelings.

The movie is a Jewel. “Una joya” or “Uma preciosidade” how me and my south-american friends would say. It has a historical character, in the 1920’s, during the british occupation in Ireland. It’s centered in a small group (or cell) of the I.R.A. that lives in a small town. For me, its universal. The struggle, the selvagery, is like the Old Testament, there is no room for gentlemans, in this war is eye for an eye. You could place the same elements in a war of the old testament and you’ll see the same things, you’ll know this is true. Violence generates Violence. The unneeded brute force that militaries do to citizens is just crazy, but the recall that is made 2 times (I think), that these british soldiers were in the first Great War made me think of the consequences of war in a human mind and soul. When the first time the film said this, I knew what to expect… but it’s set with brilliancy and almost goes unnoticed, in a good sense. The madness of war is perfectly showed here, and yet it shows the strength of the human soul… in a snap. In a moment you have a half-irish kid in the british army dealing with guilt of killing irishes and sets them free… and then you have the person that was saved, killing a irish kid for treason… In another moment you have 3 women being beaten by british soldiers, and then when they leave, after the small group consolating them, a letter announcing truce, and everyone is happy… It’s an avalanche of emotions… Rewinding and speaking of treason, isn’t the soldier a traitor? He redeemed himself. The other doesn’t have the same chance. And Damien (the main character) knows it.

Every situation in this film is well placed for a repetition. A recall. Showing the same violence being done over and over again. And it’s not obvious, but you can sense it. You can place it in Israel, Ireland or Irak. Violence knows no boundaries, it begins with British soldiers vs Irish people, then Irish soldiers vs Irish people, and finally, Brother against Brother. It’s a good way of showing this nonsense… you believe that this is revealed step by step but no, since the beggining of the film it’s brother killing brother. Human killing Human. There is no divisions or differences. We are dealing with Truth here. No one gets a chance of Life in a war, like Sinead would like to have… and in the end, very subtle, showing Sinead crying from the same point of view when the house got burned, from a impotent point of view, we know that this will repeat itself, as is repeating then.

The film approaches others subjects, themes, emotions and feelings… but I can’t do it now… it’s too fresh.
I won’t put a score for it… never will. You can’t put scores for experiences in life, but you can live them. I recommend the experience of seeing The wind that shakes the barley."

http://aronou.blogspot.com/2007/12/wind-that-shakes-barley.html

I knew I was watching an absolutely brilliant, amazing film about 15 minutes into it. The protagonist, Damien, a doctor on his way to London for a new job, witnesses two atrocities committed by British soldiers. The second atrocity happens on the train platform as he waits to catch his train. He hesitates, watching the soldiers from afar as they beat the train conductor for refusing to allow British soldiers on his train, as per the train union’s mandate. This hesitation is purely external; we see the signs of stress on his face and in his halting gestures. As the soldiers depart, dejected, Damien approaches the fallen conductor to see if he’s all right.

Abrupt cut. Close up on Damien’s face as he swears an oath of loyalty to the Republican gov’t and officially joins the Irish Republican Army, forsaking his new career as a doctor. With this magnificent, strong edit, Ken Loach frames the debate of the film. More importantly, he imparts what the film is not about: there is no internal debate about the morality of resistance. There is no hesitation to take the next step. The characters in the film and Ken Loach waste no time with that issue. It’s a complete non-issue, and Loach doesn’t even allow the audience to ponder it. A non-politicized director might’ve used the first act of the film to mull over whether or not fighting is the best thing. We might’ve seen the protagonist thinking it over, talking about it with his friends/romantic interest. Not Loach. Not in the best film of his career. Although I am an admirer of Loach, he has his weak points such as a bit too much emphasis on melodrama. But The Wind That Shakes the Barley has no such weakness.

The whole film is external. Loach doesn’t use the trappings of classical narrative with its emphasis on the individual, emotional feelings conveyed through sappy music, and self-obsession. Everything here is externalized. The characters make their decisions through active debate. They take up arms through being victimized by the British. What they fight for is not an abstract cause, but the very culture that is externalized in everything they do. We never hear the characters yammering on about the glory of the Irish flag or politicians; to Loach, that would be too abstract. Instead, we hear them speaking Gaelic, playing hurling, singing traditional songs, living the way they have for centuries. That’s what they’re fighting for, and it is all shown externally. In fact, this is all done so subtly that we’re not even aware of it at first.

For instance, the film opens with a group of young men playing hurling. A fine way to start the film, all fun and games. But the very next scene, we are given another view of that game when British soldiers arrive as some of the players arrive home. We then learn that that innocent game, a part of Irish culture, is considered a public meeting and as such, has been banned. Loach doesn’t need to hide behind abstract ideas of patriotism and nationalism. Those are mere illusions compared to the physical, external match of hurling that we just saw and now know to be just one aspect of the culture that is facing extermination.

Loach also refuses to fall prey to the trap that has sucked so many other filmmakers in. When watching an historical period piece, especially one shot in such a picture-esque country as Ireland, we have grown accustomed to seeing endless, perfectly-composed shots of lush scenery as the director equates pretty pictures with good filmmaking. As much beautiful countryside there is in The Wind That Shakes the Barley, Loach never once lingers on it. Instead, we see the countryside as the IRA fighters do: as good terrain to train in, to hide in, and to set up ambushes in. The fighters even become part of the terrain, emerging from the fog, crawling through the tall grass, sleeping in the forest. In contrast, the British soliders seem at odds with the very land they have come to occupy. When patrolling through the woods in search of IRA columns, they look out of place and clunky with their heavy packs while the fighters look perfectly natural with their trench coats and scully caps.

However, Loach has also given a complex portrait of the IRA resistance, not simply a romantic ode to the fighters. Through Loachian devices such as extended discussions and debates, a la Land and Freedom, we see the divisions within IRA ranks, namely between those like Teddy, Damien’s older brother who has a purely nationalist point of view and kisses up to rich businessmen to have their support (and money) for the fight, and those like Damien himself and Dan, who was a member of the Irish Citizen Army, participated in the Dublin Lockout where he heard James Connolly speak, and who takes a class conscious view of the struggle. He is not only opposed to British over-lords, but also to Irish ones.

Through these discussions, Loach actively draws the audience into the debate. While listening to the characters speak, we mull over what they have to say and listen to the counter-points. We are participating in the meeting. At one such discussion, the fighters debate the merits of the truce that had recently been signed. Teddy and his lot support the truce because it creates an Irish Free State. Dan and his lost oppose it because the Irish Free State remains in the British Empire, Irish still must swear loyalty to the crown, and British elites have merely been replaced by Irish ones. To this, Dan states that if the treaty is ratified, the only thing that will change is the accents of the bosses and the colour of the flag. When I heard that, I was so enraptured by the scene that I swear I almost started clapping along with the characters who supported that stance. My arms actually began to move before I remembered that I was sitting in a theatre, not in the meeting room.

One last thing I want to comment on, and that is the local focus of the film. Not only does Loach use non-actors who are local to County Cork to create his naturalist style, but the focus of the film is also entirely local. We know that the fighters are one part of a larger movement, but we also see everything from their point of view. There are no cutaways to London so we can see the politicians debating, there are no sub-plots which try too hard to portray every aspect of the conflict. It is only one small part of a larger struggle that we are privy to, and in this we are exactly like the characters. We find out about the terms of the new truce the same way the fighters do, literally: by seeing it in a cinema. The fighters learn that they are to still remain loyal to the crown because they are told that in a newsreel at the movie theatre in a brilliant bit of audience identification concocted by Loach.

By far, this is Loach’s best film.

War films — like other genres defined by a singular, restrictive theme — suffer from the success of their predecessors. Once you’ve seen a few brilliant samples of the genre, the rest starts to feel commonplace or repetitive. Yes, war is terrible. Yes, the toll on morality and human lives is devastating. Yes, it eats away at the soul. Yes, I’ve heard and thought this a hundred times before. Like the sound of that somewhat corny Motown song, “War, What is it Good For?” (“…Absolutely nothing!”), too much of the same turns the weighty subject into something glib and insubstantial. Only occasionally, films arise which cast a new light on a forgotten or misunderstood conflict, or executes the story-telling with power, a new voice, or originality, reminding us of why war films should still be made.

Ken Loach’s earnestness in making “The Wind…” is above reproach. The mournful titular song is one that has tugged at my heart since I first heard it many years ago and I feel that same tone of honesty and sorrow in the film. The Irish War of Independence and Irish Civil War are expressed here in personal terms through the brothers, Damien and Teddy. Initially, the charismatic Teddy is the ideological leader and bookish Damien is the follower. Yet as the revolution tears their world apart, they find themselves on opposing sides, leading to terrible losses and sacrifices. Cillian Murphy and Pádraic Delaney give credible performances as the leads; Orla Fitzgerald as the fiercely courageous Sinéad and Liam Cunningham as Dan are standouts in their supporting roles. Loach lends his interesting perspective on the Irish revolution, painting the politics of it with broad strokes and zooming in on the social ramifications of independence.

Yet for all its heartfelt empathy for the Irish struggle, it did not draw me in emotionally. There was an aloofness to the film that didn’t seem right. It’s easy to see the reasons for everyone’s moral outrage — the killing or torture of an innocent will incense just about everyone — but nothing was offered to explain the other personal choices. This left characters with nothing but outrage as a motivator. There is a tender, fleeting element of romance but it is scarcely explored to have any impact to character development (other than to generate more outrage when something bad happens to either one of the couple). The brothers’ relationship is supposed to carry the film, yet it is hardly touched upon besides explaining that Damien has always been in Teddy’s shadow and later wants to be his own man.

I wholly support Irish independent cinema and laud the film’s success. However, I would be lying if I say I understand the Palme D’Or win. I gleaned very little from “The Wind…” that I hadn’t seen better elsewhere. Perhaps if I had never seen any war films before, this may have floored me.

Vencedor da Palma de Ouro em Cannes em 2006, VENTOS DA LIBERDADE não escapou das críticas que normalmente caem sobre os filmes do inglês Ken Loach. A posição claramente definida do cineasta o torna alvo fácil para definições igualmente simplificadoras de “diretor de esquerda” ou “politicamente ingênuo”. Em seus filmes menos bem sucedidos, estas afirmações procedem, mas quando Loach ultrapassa as limitações que ele mesmo se impõe o resultado costuma ser esclarecedor. Como no pungente MEU NOME É JOE e naquele que talvez seja seu melhor filme, o belo TERRA E LIBERDADE.

É com este último que VENTOS DA LIBERDADE dialoga, tanto temática quanto formalmente. O novo longa de Loach versa sobre as raízes do Exército Republicano Irlandês, o IRA, criado para expulsar as forças inglesas que oprimem os irlandeses no início do século XX. Damien (Cillian Murphy) é um jovem e promissor médico prestes a embarcar para Londres, onde assumirá um emprego no melhor hospital da Inglaterra. Dois trágicos eventos o convencerão de que sua presença na luta contra o exército britânico será mais necessária. O irmão de Damien, Teddy (Padraic Delaney), é um dos líderes da incipiente organização. Mas logo, o desenrolar do sangrento conflito e suas ramificações políticas irão colocar companheiros contra companheiros e irmãos contra irmãos.

Por trás dos fatos históricos vistos pelo prisma do personagem central, Loach discute mais uma vez os ideais que movem nações. É quando VENTOS DA LIBERDADE se aproxima mais de TERRA E LIBERDADE. Este último falava sobre os voluntários das mais diferentes nacionalidades que se juntavam contra o exército de Franco na Guerra Civil Espanhola, unidos antes de tudo pela possibilidade de lutarem contra o mal comum e fazerem a coisa certa, mesmo que não saibam muito bem que coisa é esta. Esta racionalização do processo ideológico atinge seu cume numa longa discussão sobre reforma agrária que era o ápice daquele filme. Temos em VENTOS DA LIBERDADE dois momentos onde Loach retoma o mesmo artifício. O primeiro deles logo após a primeira audiência pública no novo tribunal popular, quando um comerciante é condenado a indenizar uma pobre senhora da qual cobrou juros abusivos por um empréstimo. Acontece que o mesmo comerciante é também um dos principais financiadores do IRA, e “sem armas não existe luta armada”, como deixa claro Teddy. O segundo e principal momento é quando ficam sabendo sobre a trégua assinada pelos dirigentes da organização em Londres, onde fica estabelecido que a Irlanda será tida como um estado independente, porém com lealdade ao trono inglês. Loach utiliza-se de ambas as cenas com o mesmo intuito de desmistificar os ideais sem, no entanto, invalidá-los.

Ao mesmo tempo em que acompanhamos a jornada emocional de Damien, que abandona a lógica científica e acadêmica para abraçar conceitos mais abstratos do posicionamento ideológico (“Estudei anatomia durante vários anos só para chegar a esse momento”, lamenta Damien antes de eliminar um amigo de infância tornado delator), é a razão simples e ética do ex-maquinista Dan (o excelente Liam Cunningham) que permanece como o centro moral do filme. Mais do que o conflito sangrento que o tinge, é o sepultamento desta ética e da identidade pátria e pessoal (explicitado no assassinato a sangue frio que abre o filme) que torna VENTOS DA LIBERDADE algo além do que um complemento perfeito para MICHAEL COLLINS de Neil Jordan, outra abordagem sobre a divisão da nação irlandesa. Loach lamenta antes de tudo a divisão da alma.