The Wind That Shakes the Barley deserves acceptance

The Wind That Shakes the Barley

Director: Ken Loach

Cast: Cillian Murphy, Padraic Delaney, Liam Cunningham, Siobhan McSweeney

Cert: 15

Loach’s controversial Cannes winner is everything we have come to expect from the director: harrowingly realistic, left-wing and, claim the British critics, strongly anti-British.

That it’s a story set during the fight for Irish freedom we could expect nothing else, yet it is, at heart, a story of a nation and a family divided.

It was a bloody and bitter period of Ireland’s turbulent history and Loach captures it in all its blood and bitterness, it is what Loach does best.

His cast never lets him down in the sort of film that picks up awards but never seems to gain mainstream acceptance … this is one film that fully deserves to.

Star Rating: 5/5