By Timothy Chow
My idea of St. Patrick's Day turned out to be rather
moribund. Didn't wear any green, nor any ridiculous t-shirts that say
"Kiss me, I'm Irish,” or even go out to get wasted. I did, however, go out
with my friend to see The Wind That Shakes the Barley
because it finally opened this weekend after many years, and because we felt
the need to do something to celebrate the Irish-ness of the day.
I also saw 300 today. I'd say the former is
better by a large margin, but that's only because I like movie elements such as
a vague concept of a plot and simple things like emotions and acting of some
sort. Unfortunately still, The
Wind That Shakes the Barley wasn't
as amazing as I thought it'd be in light of the Palme D'Or it received at
Cannes, but it did get me
all teary-eyed when certain unmentionable spoiler-y acts occurred, versus when
certain unmentionable spoiler-y acts happened in 300.
The problem for me was multi-fold: for the first half of the
movie I spent most of my time trying to figure out what the hell they were
saying. I've had some experience with Irish people, I've met some in real life,
but the accents were nowhere like this. Cue multiple people speaking at the
same time with somewhat inaudible accents and it = confusion (Seriously! That's
like the entire film, just many people speaking at the same time). Then once I
was able to understand what they were saying, a lot of it still didn't make
sense. So Cillian Murphy’s character sees a friend getting beaten to death, he
still goes to
London.
He goes to the train station and sees some random stranger get beaten and he
decides to stay? I'm not quite convinced.
What was more convincing however was the acting, mostly Cillian's. I went over
to IMDb to check out what other people thought of the movie and most of the
discussion is political in nature, whether the IRA was good/bad, blah, blah, blah.
I have no vested interest, nor really know anything about Irish independence,
so I don't feel the particular need - nor would I be able to make any statement
about it - but a lot of criticism was directed over what people felt as Ken
Loach's rather two-dimensional portrayal of the British. I don't know what
happened, but if it happened, then it happened, no need to sugar-coat history
no?
Anyway, if it's playing in your area (apparently it's only
playing in 6 theatres in
Canada
and 8 in the
United States),
I would go see it with some expectations but not with any sense that it'll
knock your socks off. It's a sad drama that has little bits of things for
everyone: some action, some romance, some political intrigue - it works, but it
won't make you suddenly believe in the power of cinema again if you've been
lacking in the good movie department. Actually, the best moments were the one
on ones, the little dialogues between friends, lovers and family that really
make the movie human-scaled.
One last comment: I did like the fact that it's an
Irish/British/French/Spanish/Italian/German co-production. Why not Swedish and
Danish as well?
3 out of 5 Stars
