The Wind That Shakes the Barley

"War has cost them their innocence... Freedom will cost them their blood."

2006 2h 7m EN

👍

7.3

SOLID

★7.3TMDB · 934

DramaWar

Synopsis

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In 1920s Ireland young doctor Damien O'Donovan prepares to depart for a new job in a London hospital. As he says his goodbyes at a friend's farm, British Black and Tans arrive, and a young man is killed. Damien joins his brother Teddy in the Irish Republican Army, but political events are soon set in motion that tear the brothers apart.

“War has cost them their innocence... Freedom will cost them their blood.”

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Cast

Cillian Murphy
Damien
Pádraic Delaney
Teddy
Liam Cunningham
Dan
Orla Fitzgerald
Sinead
Mary O'Riordan
Peggy
Mary Murphy
Bernadette
Laurence Barry
Micheail
Damien Kearney
Finbar

Credits

Behind the camera

Director: Ken Loach
Writers: Paul Laverty
Languages: Irish, Latin, English
Countries: Ireland, United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Spain

Want more? Switch to Cinephile mode in the header for DP, composer, budget, box office, production companies, keywords, and release history.

Did you know?

Fun facts 🍿

1 / 8

MONEY

Did you know

Made its money back 3.5× over at the box office.

MoodPlayr · trivia#01

2 / 8

ERA

Did you know

Released 20 years ago.

MoodPlayr · trivia#02

3 / 8

WORLD

Did you know

Dialogue crosses 3 languages: Irish, Latin, English.

MoodPlayr · trivia#03

4 / 8

WORLD

Did you know

International production across 5 countries: Ireland, United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Spain.

MoodPlayr · trivia#04

5 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Directed by Ken Loach, shot by Barry Ackroyd. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.

MoodPlayr · trivia#05

6 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Original score by George Fenton. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.

MoodPlayr · trivia#06

7 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Editor Jonathan Morris shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.

MoodPlayr · trivia#07

8 / 8

CAST

Did you know

Cillian Murphy and Pádraic Delaney and Liam Cunningham carry the top of the cast.

MoodPlayr · trivia#08

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Ken Loach directs. Barry Ackroyd behind the camera. George Fenton scores. Jonathan Morris cuts. Made its budget back several times over at the box office. Produced in Ireland, United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Spain. Dialogue in Irish, Latin, English.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

1Made its money back 3.5× over at the box office.
2Released 20 years ago.
3Dialogue crosses 3 languages: Irish, Latin, English.
4International production across 5 countries: Ireland, United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Spain.
5Directed by Ken Loach, shot by Barry Ackroyd. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
6Original score by George Fenton. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
7Editor Jonathan Morris shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
8Cillian Murphy and Pádraic Delaney and Liam Cunningham carry the top of the cast.
9Marketing tagline: "War has cost them their innocence... Freedom will cost them their blood.".
10IMDB entry: tt0460989 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.
11Classified under 21 themes, including "guerrilla warfare", "civil war", "sibling relationship", "england".

The technical file

Cinematography: Barry Ackroyd
Original score: George Fenton
Editing: Jonathan Morris
Production design: Fergus Clegg
Costume design: Eimer Ní Mhaoldomhnaigh
Makeup / hair: Patricia Kirkman
Sound: John Hayward
Stunt coordinator: Marc Cass
Runtime: 127 min · 2h 7m
Aspect ratio (typical): 1.37:1 (Academy)
Status: Released
Budget: $6,500,000
Box office: $22,903,165
Return: 352% of budget
Original language: EN
Certification (US): NR
IMDB: The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006)

Awards

European Film Award for Best Cinematographer
Palme d'Or

Individual records documented via Wikidata; the summary above may count more.

Also by

Ken Loach

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Community reviews

What people are saying

Andres Gomez2013-09-27
★ 8/10
Intense drama about Ireland's independence from the UK and the ultimate reasons for the need of freedom.
tmdb280390232022-09-03
★ 6/10
After watching The Wind That Shakes the Barley, I'm tempted to say that Hollywood ruined Cillian Murphy, but the fact is that this drama written by Paul Laverty and directed by Ken Loach doesn’t really establish, for better or worse, a before and after in the career of the Irish actor; it's more a case of a blind squirrel finding a nut — which is still one more nut than most find (plus, Murphy's range is undeniable, being able to convincingly convey both the most abject cowardice and the most selfless heroism, even within the same film, as he does A Quiet Place Part II). The Irish Republican Army (IRA) is a group whose main characteristic is separation, especially from itself; Loach deals with the original breakup, resulting in the first two iterations the IRA, drawing a parallel with the story of two brothers who feel compelled to put ideology before family because each is convinced they bleed greener than the other. It is said that history repeats itself; first as a tragedy, then as a farce. TWTStB follows this pattern, except that in the end the farce ends up being even more tragic than the tragedy. The first half of the film takes place during the Irish War of Independence, a guerrilla war waged between 1919 and 1921 between the IRA and the British occupation forces in Ireland (which included Irish Unionists and Protestants, in contrast to Catholic Republicans). The second part takes place during the Irish Civil War (1922-1923) which immediately followed the Anglo-Irish Treaty which resulted in the creation of the Irish Free State. Many of those who fought on both sides of the conflict had been members of the IRA during the War of Independence. The bitter irony is that an English character more or less foretells this when he says: "God save Ireland if ever the [Irish republicans] take control." I'm making it sound like a history class, but TWTStB is far from it; indeed, there is a lesson here, but it is a timeless and universal moral about the fratricidal nature of all wars. Loach and Laverty make their protagonists, Damien (Murphy) and Teddy O'Donovan (Pádraic Delaney) biological brothers to emphasize that all men — Irish and Irish, or even, why not, Irish and English — are brothers and, as As Donne said, "the death of any man diminishes me" because "no man is an island." Now, just because their characters are symbolic archetypes doesn't mean that Murphy and Delaney just stand there holding signs that say "Cain" and "Abel"; the former in particular turns in a performance in which we can find shades of Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia.
CinemaSerf2023-03-26
★ 6/10
Though quite provocative, I was really disappointed with the anti-British simplicity of this drama. It all centres around two brothers - "Teddy" (Pádraic Delaney) and "Damien" (Cillian Murphy) and the increasingly desperate - and violent - tactics they employed to eject the occupiers from their country. The latter man is not an instant convert to these activities. About to travel to the UK to be a doctor, it's the thuggish squaddies' brutality that convinces him to stay and join his local IRA branch to fight fire with fire. His war-weary brother, on the other hand, is gradually appreciating the stale-mate nature of the predicament and when a settlement is reached between Dublin and London for the "Irish Free State" we find that these siblings are no longer quite on the same side and the conflict turns in on itself. It's not that the British behaved well here, they certainly did not - but the film lacks a key British character to put forward their position. The odious position of Empire, sure, but what, also, of the aspirations of those of a great many Unionists who wanted the status quo and who wanted no truck with the (socialist) republicanism being proposed by "Damien" et al. Again, you can see so much of director Ken Loach's own political persuasion here that he makes no attempt to balance or explain the position from the opposing side, and after a while I found it became a bit of a pontificating rant of a film that illustrated well that expression about one man's terrorist being another's freedom fighter. The then all powerful Catholic church has virtually no role at all here. It's beautifully shot and there are plenty of solid and characterful supporting roles, but no - it could have been better had the director been more interested in offering us more of a objective history rather than his own version of history.