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Cannes Film Festival Winner: Ken Loach's The Wind That Shakes the Barley

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Date: 2:00 pm, Sunday March 7, 2010

Cost: Free!

The Wind That Shakes the Barley , a film by Ken Loach, is an excessively earnest film-- and it's also a history lesson. Using Damien's fictional story as a way into actual history, the film painstakingly traces the Republican movement's war against occupying British forces in the 1920s and the resulting Anglo-Irish Treaty. Peace is declared; there is decree to end the bloodshed, but the agreement doesn't bring independence. A new kind of war begins: rather than fighting the English, the Irish themselves have become divided. It takes its title from the song "The Wind That Shakes the Barley".

Loach explores big questions. How does killing a man in cold blood change a person? (Answer: not for the better.) Do the means justify the ends, even when it means killing your friends and family in the name of liberation? (Answer: there is no easy answer.) War is hell, and in no way does The Wind That Shakes the Barley glorify it.

The film is the highest-grossing Irish-made independent film ever.

Location:

NY Public Library
Mid-Manhattan Branch
455 Fifth Ave.
(212) 576-0088 

Directions:

B, D, F, V (Bryant Park)
7 (5th Ave)


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