The Wind That Shakes the Barley : Ken Loach

 "Twas hard the woeful words to frame

To break the ties that bound us

'Twas harder still to bear the shame

Of foreign chains around us"

fr. The Wind That Shakes the Barley (1861)

- Robert Dwyer Joyce

The closeup frame of hurling match suddenly shifts to a extrem wide angled landscape view, the hill range behind  field startles the experience and enhance audience perception surely.

I was fascinated by lush green grass, hursh mountain ranges and blue ocean "The Banshees of Inisherin"

(2022). After reviewing the landscapes of "The Wind That Shakes the Barley" (2006), I am tempted to visit the countryside in Ireland.

I was stoned to relate our sacrifice for mother language during united Pakistan regime with Michaeil's refusal to say his name in English instead of Gaelic Irish and being executed brutally by British army during Irish idependence period after WWI.

Damien's decision to stay in Ireland and join with IRA when he was standing under the way out at the rail station. The way out sign seemed a symbolic meaning both for Ireland independence and Demiean's free will to fight for Ireland.

Sinead's spying and assistance to supply the weapons are the epitomes of women contributions to these kind of emergencies. With which men are incomplete in strength in any kind of resistance.

When the British army officer was plucking the each finger nail of Teddy but he was holding his resistance not leak safehouse, I just removed my earphone as I could not tolerant the sound of scream as the other prisoners did the opposite by singing togather and making sound by knocking on the doors and walls.

I was surprised to hear Demien's recitation of William Blake's verse written on prison cell's wall. Music and poetry are the two art forms that make motivation and give resistance power in wartime all times and places.

🌼The Garden of Love

                 - William  Blake

"I went to the Garden of Love,

And saw what I never had seen:

A Chapel was built in the midst,

Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,

And 'Thou shalt not' writ over the door;

So I turn'd to the Garden of Love,

That so many sweet flowers bore. 

And I saw it was filled with graves,

And tomb-stones where flowers should be:

And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,

And binding with briars, my joys & desires."

The first utter climax for me was the teansition from the hue and cry in the republic court room to the shreen and greenay wood road where Damien narrates to Sinead the scenes with Chris' mother what is not screened in the film. The techniques of telling story not by film framing but by the narration through a character 's voice is so brilliantly executed in the film. At first it's been surprising but at the end it's been soothing to the mind.

I was in total astonishment when I came across to know that Ireland was struggling to get the complete freedom instead of British given dominion status as India also on tha road to revolution to get the purna swaraj (Complete Independence ) during the same period of time. It's more terrible resemblance of Britițsh divide and rule  policies that pushed Ireland into a civil war, similarly india had to face the same fate of division and unavoidable communal riot  muslim and hindu Bengalis as well Muslim and Shikh Punjabies. 

Crying is always a foreign thing for me but when Teddy ordered the death shoot for Damien, I couldn't hhelp but to snob. It's more terrible to fight with own kind than to war against the outsider. Irish had cursed with same damages as well as Indians.

I was being statued as soon as I heaed Damien dialogued with high pitched rage:

"This is not the will of the people, this is the fear of the people."

The freedom of the people gets damaged when their wills are not reflected upon accordingly, when their voices are covered with dense fogs.

World War I made the first artificial rapture in world geography and ethnicity in Middle East, Russia, Ireland, India and so and so.

I wonder and wander that the land, language and nation in "The Wind That Shakes the Barley" are different but the story, struggle and sufferings are ours as good as common in the deep ground.

Ken Loach is a British filmmaker who made the Irish film showing all parties' perspectives. In every detrimental and urgent situation, all parties involved in are suffered more or less in a same degree. A true artist can only portray the actual lines of beauty.

And a honest artist doesn't need the literary dramatic highlight as he is able see the orginals and heard the vanished ecos.

🎞The Wind That Shakes the Barley

Ken Loach

English, UK, 2006.

PS: I watched "The Wind That Shakes the Barley" to have a taste of the representative film from each nominated director of the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.