American Release of ‘The Wind That Shakes The Barley’
I’ve been meaning to post on the American release of The Wind That Shakes The Barley since it was first announced back in August. It’s probably the most asked question I’ve received in those five months since.
On March 16 The Wind That Shakes The Barley is being released under the IFC First Take scheme. This means the film will be released on cable simultaneously with a theatrical release.
It does mean that TWTSTB won’t be eligible for Oscars next month, and might well be forgotten about come 2008, but according to the Wild Geese Today, producer Rebecca O’Brien is more than happy with the prize the film has already won (the Palme d’Or at Cannes), and the treatment it will get from IFC.
IFC specializes in distributing quality independent movies and its First Take program particularly concentrates on the critically acclaimed independent films that usually only get a limited release in New York, Los Angeles, and a few film festivals.
This simultaneous release method is also known as the Day/Date model referring to films being available through Video On Demand on the same day and date they are released in the theatre.
Last Sunday I was talking with Máirtín de Cógáin of Cork, who plays the minor role of Sean in The Wind That Shakes The Barley, and I told him I saw him crying in it.
-What did you think of it? He asked me
-It was like Laurel and Hardy, I said, though I was referring to the crying, not the film.
I saw TWTSTB a few months ago and it was largely what I expected. If you like what Ken Loach does then you can’t but be moved by this film, but if you don’t you’ll probably find it quite boring.
While I’m firmly in the former camp, I have read reactions from bloggers who didn’t like it at all - like The Swearing Lady and some of her commenters.
Brother the Younger, being a military historian, saw it in a much more positive light, and it was hugely successful in Ireland, and did quite well in Britain once we got past the initial reactions of the columnists who didn’t see it. Check the reviews from Ireland and Britain.
For me it’s a very good film, portraying just how pathetic guerilla warfare and its aftermath are, at times, crushingly ordinary.
It doesn’t look like a blockbuster, or even a war film. It just looks very real, with an amateur sheen in the way we’re all amateurs when it comes to killing. Guns in the hands of unremarkable people, ordinary people, doing horrible things to each other. And themselves.
Civil war follows independence as surely as puberty follows childhood, and Ireland’s civil war was a true civil war, not a religious or ethnic one. So brothers were pitched against brother and fathers against sons, and The Wind That Shakes The Barley gives us this awful cliché. Predictable as it is, it’s no less heartbreaking for it.
It’s not A Bridge Too Far, or even Michael Collins, it’s almost a pseudo-documentary of a group of people with fears and ideas as they give painful birth to a nation. Cillian Murphy and the rest of the cast are excellent, and yes there may well be some tiresome socialism espoused in there but there has been tiresome socialism interlaced with Irish nationalism for a very long time. And I say that as a tiresome socialist.
March 14, 2007 in America, see it - in the theatres or through Video On Demand.
See More On This Film:
• Ken Loach: Making Movies for Britain and Ireland
• Articles on The Wind That Shakes The Barley
• Máirtín de Cógáin’s report from Cannes
• Post-Barley Cillian Murphy Interview
• Liam Neeson messes with Cillian Murphy’s head
• The BBC Shakes the Barley
• The Gay Irish Icon Who Shot Michael Collins
• Loach Irish Film Wins Cannes Big Prize
Eolaí gan Fhéile:
Did I miss something, or was there no American debut for the movie “The Wind that Shakes the Barley”?
I even found it very difficult to find a DVD of the movie, having paid $35 to an eBayer in Ireland for a Region 2 version of the disc and watching it on my daughter’s computer.
The movie was very well done in my opinion. People of Irish descent should see it and get a sense of the history of our people.
Pat, it’s on Friday, March 16 - so very soon - though showing a few days earlier in a premiere in New York. The date is up there in teh second paragraph.
And yes DVDs would be difficult until after this so-called Day/Date release with it coming out simultaneously on cable.
The deal was a long time in happening though.
this nonsense about releasing TWTSTB in the US is grotesque i suppose any movie not made in hollywood is somehow unclean. i saw this movie in killarney and it was superb and far and away above anyother shite put our by the leftcoast this year. you will not breathe during this film.