Two brothers pick up rifles for the same cause and end up on opposite sides of it: Ken Loach's The Wind That Shakes the Barley turns the Irish War of Independence into a story about how a single family absorbs the cost of that split.
What is The Wind That Shakes the Barley about?
Set in 1920s Ireland, the film follows Damien, a young doctor who abandons plans to work in London and joins his brother Teddy in the Irish Republican Army as British forces crack down on their county. The early stretches of the film focus on the brutal, close-quarters guerrilla campaign the two wage together, ambushes, informants, reprisals, shot with a documentary-like plainness that refuses to romanticize the violence on either side. Once a treaty divides the movement itself, Damien and Teddy find themselves arguing not with the British but with each other over what independence is actually worth, and the film narrows from a war story into a study of two brothers whose loyalty to the same fight has pulled them apart. Cillian Murphy carries Damien's shift from reluctant recruit to hardened partisan, while Pádraic Delaney plays Teddy as a man willing to compromise for a peace he can live with, and the friction between them gives the back half of the film its weight.
About the cast
Cillian Murphy leads as Damien, with Pádraic Delaney as his brother Teddy; Liam Cunningham, Orla Fitzgerald, Gerard Kearney, William Ruane, Roger Allam, and Laurence Barry round out the ensemble of villagers, soldiers, and comrades caught up in the conflict.
Context & significance
Ken Loach directed the film, working in the same unadorned, socially grounded style he has applied to British labor and class stories, here turned toward a specific and contested chapter of Irish history. The production is a multi-country European co-production spanning Ireland, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Spain, France, Belgium, and Switzerland, and it went on to a widely admired critical reception.
Watching The Wind That Shakes the Barley on Ktime
The Wind That Shakes the Barley is available on K-Time with a Farsi dub and Farsi subtitles, letting Persian-speaking viewers follow its dense political dialogue in the form that suits them best. Watching requires a free K-Time account login, though the film's page can be browsed without one, and the platform's Farsi-first interface is built for the Iranian diaspora.