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Ken Loach interview
He discusses the negative press reaction to the Palme d'Or winning 'The Wind that Shakes the Barley'.
Jun 9 2006
'Why does Ken Loach loathe his country so much?' was the question put by the Daily Mail last week after the director's new film, 'The Wind that Shakes the Barley', won the Palme d'Or at Cannes.
Set in 1920s Ireland it charts the struggle of the Republican movement for independence against the British and the subsequent civil war. The Sun branded it 'the most pro-IRA film ever', and the broadsheets weren't much kinder. Even Loach's triumphant punch as he accepted the prize came under the scrutiny of a Guardian columnist who wondered whether it was perhaps a communist salute. It's been quite a savaging for the first British film in ten years to take one of the industry's most distinguished prizes (the last UK Palme d'Or winner was Mike Leigh's 'Secrets & Lies' in 1996).
Talking in his Soho office, Loach describes the backlash as 'vicious' and 'contemptible' – though not unexpected. 'It's not worth giving a considered reply to because it's right-wing rant, which I expect from The Mail and The Sun. The fact that The Sun says it's a "must not see film" should encourage everyone to see it.'
So what's been causing the fuss? An early scene in Loach's film shows the tranquility of rural Cork disrupted by a unit of Blacks and Tans – the mainly demobbed British First World War soldiers operating in Ireland. The unit arrests a group of lads for playing banned Irish sports, and when one boy refuses to speak his name in English there is a scuffle and he's taken into a barn and beaten to death. There are later scenes of torture and soldiers shooting at unarmed civilians. Anti-British? Not according to Loach. 'We could have made it much worse about the British. But there's so much more to say.'
Boxes are piled high in Loach's office – he's having a clear-out – and their yellowing labels identify correspondence dating back to the 1960s, a testament to a career that now spans 40 years, from 'Cathy Come Home' and 'Kes' in the 1960s to his recent Glasgow trilogy.
The Troubles are not new territory; in 1990 he made 'Hidden Agenda', a fictional account of the collusion of the security forces in the murder of a civil liberties campaigner. 'The Wind that Shakes the Barley' is fiction too, though Loach defends its historical accuracy and points out that none of the criticism levelled against the film has accused it of fabricating the facts. 'Not one of them has said that one thing in the film is false.'
The chief interest in Loach's new film are the radicalised young men who join the ranks of Irish Republican Army volunteers. They include Cillian Murphy ('28 Days Later…', 'Batman Begins') as a doctor set to leave for England, but who stays to fight in the IRA. He joins a unit ambushing British army barracks and motorcades, alongside his brother Teddy (Pádraic Delaney). British terror is met with Irish terror, with reprisals on both sides escalating. After the divisive truce and partial independence of 1921, Loach follows the splintering of the Republican movement and its descent into civil war.
Loach dismisses the accusation that he made the film as a direct comment on the Iraq war, a claim made in the Mail and elsewhere. He says that he and his long-time writing partner Paul Laverty had been thinking of a film along these lines for over a decade. 'But it’s always relevant,' he explains. 'There's always an army of occupation somewhere, and a place where people are trying to get their independence and the right to democracy. At the moment, the occupation is in Iraq.'
The fact that the film was part-funded by lottery money, care of the UK Film Council, to the tune of £545,000 (out of a total estimated budget of £4.5 million) has further irked some. 'That really gets up their nose,' Loach says smiling.
As with all his recent films, funding is a complex business, with a handful of European distributors all contributing to the coffers. Loach has always been better received on the continent than at home – both commercially and critically. Few British critics at Cannes were tipping 'The Wind that Shakes the Barley' for the top prize. Instead, all eyes were on 'Volver', the new film by the Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar.
Critics here regularly accuse Loach of being preachy, banging the political drum or, maybe worst of all, lacking subtlety. It's often said that while the man is to be respected, his films are rarely to be enjoyed. (The vitality and unexpected breadth of life in Loach's film are perhaps overlooked, from Robert Carlyle's romance with a Nicaraguan exile in 'Carla's Song' to the experience of Hispanic janitors in 'Bread and Roses'. His films can be funny too – Ricky Tomlinson is vintage in 'Riff-Raff'.) For his part, Loach is a vocal critic of the critics, and dismisses most of his detractors as right wing and preoccupied with style and technique over content, 'they're all Thatcherites at heart'.
While his thinking may be radical – or firebrand, to borrow the tabloid lingo – Loach is considered and modest in person. Talk to him, and there is none of the tub-thumping with which he is often charged. The actress Eva Birthistle, who was in his last film 'Ae Fond Kiss' describes Loach's manner as 'vicar-like'.
As he turns 70 – the Times disparagingly referred to him last week as a 'pensioner from Nuneaton' – Loach is about to embark on one of his most ambitious films yet: 'These Times' (again written by Laverty) will be a contemporary story set just outside London. It's not an easy project. Loach's search for authenticity, often casting non-professional actors, is no mean feat in a city of 7 million. But the director is clearly excited: 'Everything that's going on in the world is represented somehow in London.'
And what about the small matter of the Palme d'Or? How did it feel to collect the top prize at the world's most important film festival? He explains how his moment of glory very nearly turned into farce. 'There was a tricky moment where I stood on Emmanuelle Béart's dress, and she started to move away. I had a picture of toppling over into pink chiffon, of us both collapsing.'
'The Wind that Shakes the Barley' opens on June 23.
User comments on this story
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- triona said...
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To Kieran:
You may just be right there , now that the truth is out !
...and Eamonn:
Yes it is time they left (I have just decided!) and it's also time to stop fudging the facts to Irish school kids with a shaved down version of a massively important part of Irish History. I 'm NOT suggesting we all rise up in arms ! Oh no, NO more bloodshed pleeease but much more films like this one which broke my complaisant heart (I'm one of the many non opinionated, "happy -to -be -free" products of The Free State) as Cry Freedom did with it's heartbreaking list of men who were supposed to have slipped in the shower...) God bless your cotten socks is all I have to say to yor Mr. Ken Loach and and to courageous directors like you. Posted on Jan 20 2007 22:26 - Report as inappropriate
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- kieran said...
- tiocfaidh ar la Posted on Jan 10 2007 17:34
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- Ken said...
- There is a scene in the movie where Damien writes his lover, Sinead, and asks her to look after his brother, who he fears has already died inside. In fact, it is Damien who has long been dead inside, having lost his soul on a lonely hillside where he executed two men in cold blood. There is a lot of cold blooded killing in this movie, and whatever Ken Loach really wanted to say, it is the brutality that speaks loudest to me. It is a brutality that begets only more of the same, transforming righteous victims into copies of their tormentors. Whatever the merit of the political goal, at a personal level, the violence always ends in tragedy. Posted on Dec 30 2006 00:57
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- Marie Kleinknecht said...
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to Puzzled Jane :
please remember that your personal opinion is NOT a universal one ! I will not admit that you should tell me what to think, and if you have the right to have your own opinion, let the other have their own view concerning this film ; and if you had read the other comments, you should have known. so how can you even suggest this film should have a "total re-working" ?!! who do you think you are ?!! some kind of god who decides what has the right to exist or not ?!! you're not the only person on this planet, land on earth !!
especially that no one said they didn't understand the film (is the irish accent so hard to get for australians ?) or that it was unbelievable that two brothers can make such opposite life choices, on the contrary I find it very realistic ; there's many families where two brothers or sisters have taken total oppposite choices of lifestyle and work. and in films, I remember particularly Sean Penn's Indian Runner. Posted on Dec 16 2006 05:42 - Report as inappropriate
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- Eamonn Boyce said...
- The film was only a microism of the atricities committed by the British. The sad part being that Free State governments have carefully kept the story out of the education system.Britain invaded Ireland 900 years ago - is'int it time they left!!! Posted on Oct 18 2006 16:34
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- Puzzled Jane in Australia said...
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I'' m pro Irish national independence and anti Iraq war, so dismiss rightist labels in daring to criticise this film which I had to force myself to watch to the end with a rising tide of anger at how hokey, badly acted, bewildering, unenlightening, unbelievable and unmoving most of it is. Only about 5% of what was said was comprehensible till the Treaty part, but then the film fails to elucidate the esoteric historical conflict or exactly WHAT was so irreconcilable in the brothers' political and ideological positions. There is no character development and it is unbelievable that a "realistic" brother would submit to pointless martyrdom and equally unbelievable that his brother would be executioner.
Only Irish history buffs would have any understanding of the meaning of Sinn Fein, the Irish Free State etc. The film fails to make clear who all the characters are, especially when the audience is informed of their deaths and supposed to be grief stricken.
Maybe a total re-working of this film could salvage and convey the grandiose messages that favourable reviewers and award-givers wrongly claim it already does. Posted on Sep 29 2006 11:44 - Report as inappropriate
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- Penelope said...
- think Maurice Aherne didn't like the film?....... Posted on Sep 13 2006 09:04
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- Peter said...
- The saddest part of this film and indeed Irish history of this period was the Irish Civil War and of green fighting green. The brutality of the Civil War was often worse than the that of war against the British. The cost was much higher in numbers killed and Ireland certainly lost some of her great leaders. I thought the film portrayed the huge damage the civil war caused quite well Posted on Sep 01 2006 02:39
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- sean said...
- tans were evil bastards......my grandfather in kerry saw them in action Posted on Jun 29 2006 22:01
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- Maurice Aherne said...
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To the intelligent contributions here, I hunbly advise…..
This film, ‘The Wind that Shakes the Barley’ does not even begin to attempt to portray the actual, and factual brutality of the Black and Tans and other ancillary forces, within the south of Ireland at that period.
For the erstwhile B+T, read the present day alpahbet soup of vicious butchery videlicet double digit numbers of loyalist killer groups who still ply their murderous trade with impunity.
Lessons are never learned in some quarters.
Meanwhile the self serving; self pocket lining, deluded pseudo ‘thinkers’ among whom Ruth Dudley Edwards, and Michael Gove are in the vangueard of the genus (dare one say and admittedly ad hominem, the incredibly ugly in body, as well in spirit Ruth Dudley Edwards, and Michael Gove)....
ply their old trade and make ‘their name’ in duplicitous commentary. Posted on Jun 17 2006 16:32 - Report as inappropriate
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- David said...
- I was also shocked at the comments from 'The Sun'. Why is it so hard for the majority of the British people to accept the fact that the IRA became into existance because of the oppressive policy the British enforced in Ireland. They where in no means treated fairly by us. Also these critics and tabloids should also take note the the Irish Republican Army are not the same as the 'Provisional Irish Republican Army' that they are used to reporting about in the last 30 years. There is a difference, and as journalists they should also report the difference rather than labeling them all as one, as miss information is still propaganda. Posted on Jun 10 2006 17:21
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- Kim said...
- The problem I have-- as an American woman-- with people comparing the IRA in "The Wind that Shakes the Barley" to the insurgency in Iraq is this: as far as I can tell, the IRA of the 1920s wasn't interested in punching the world back into the 14th century, in denying women the right to read and obtain educations, in forcing women to wear bags over their heads, or in shooting people for wearing the wrong length of soccer shorts. Apples and oranges, folks-- or Braeburns and Granny Smiths, at any rate. Of course, I'm just a dumb brute American: what do I know--? Posted on Jun 10 2006 01:48
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- Jude Farry said...
- Why do we as English find it so hard to celebrate one of our highly awarded directors? Even now on the eve of his greatest achievement (or indeed one of the greatest achievements of British cinema period), the slander of Mr Loach and his work has only worsened. All over a film that does little more than tell the story of the imperialistic past of the British Empire. Are we still in denial that these events ever happened? Surely by now we can identify that the IRA was born on a wave of English aggression. If the Germans, Italians, Australians or even South Africans can celebrate films about the horrors of their recent past, then why do we as English find it so hard to do the same? Maybe it is because we find these past acts of imperialism and violence so easy to parallel with our current role in the world – namely in Iraq. Maybe because it reminds us that the ‘enemy’ we now face was born from the same kind of oppression as the IRA. And that maybe this new ‘terrorism’ is once again the result of our own actions. Posted on Jun 09 2006 23:29
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