Vitals

Cillian Murphy as Damien O’Donovan, Irish Republican Army soldier

County Cork, Ireland, 1920 through 1921

Film: The Wind That Shakes the Barley
Release Date: June 23, 2006
Director: Ken Loach
Costume Designer: Eimer Ní Mhaoldomhnaigh

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Last year on March 17, I commemorated St. Patrick’s Day by watching The Wind That Shakes the Barley, a fictional chronicle of two brothers from County Cork during the Irish conflicts of the early 1920s. Cork native Cillian Murphy stars as Damien O’Donovan, who joins a local Irish Republican Army flying column led by his brother Teddy (Pádraic Delaney).

The brothers fight alongside each other during the Irish War of Independence, but the circumstances of the Anglo-Irish Treaty and Irish Free State deepen the divide between the increasingly radical Damien and more pragmatic Teddy as the two find themselves on opposing sides of the subsequent Irish Civil War. Continue reading →