Articles on The Wind That Shakes The Barley
You can ignore my background on Ken Loach and why I think The Wind That Shakes The Barley is an important part of growing up for a country, but you can’t ignore the Kansas City Star, can you?
The Star today features an article on the Irish (& British) movie tipped for awards at Cannes:
A regular at the Cannes Film Festival with such films as My Name Is Joe, Sweet Sixteen and Land and Freedom, Loach returns with The Wind that Shakes the Barley, a bloody saga of British against Irish and brother against brother during Ireland’s fight for independence and subsequent civil war in the early 1920s
And you can compare that with a great article I read yesterday in the Guardian in Britain:
No doubt this film is Loach’s pointed riposte to the Hollywoodisation of Michael Collins - who might have become Ireland’s Franco had he not caught a stray bullet in 1922. Donal O’Driscoll, Loach’s historical advisor, accuses the Neil Jordan film of being hamstrung by hindsight. Granted it came out at a tricky time, but its claim that Collins died trying to take the gun out of Irish politics is frankly bollocks
See also:
• Ken Loach: The Wind That Shakes The Barley
• Irish Movie Tax Breaks Approved by EC