Tag Archive: IRA


KEN LOACH BREAKS LIKE THE WIND

Filed under: Fiction, Movies, Politics — 1 Comment
November 18, 2012

THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY directed by Ken Loach (Ireland, 2006)

Ken Loach says “if we tell the truth about the past, we will have the truth about the present” but when strong emotions are stirred and the social and political stakes are so high, defining ‘the truth’ is no simple task. Undeterred, simplification of the issues is what Loach and scriptwriter Paul Laverty attempt in this movie.

The film takes its title from a mournful 19th Century ballad  and won the Palme D’Or at Cannes but met with vitriolic attacks in the British tabloids, many of the fiercest critics being those who hadn’t even seen the movie.

Set in County Cork in 1920, it begins with the birth of the IRA as a revolutionary movement and ends with the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 and its immediate aftermath.

I’m not sure if Loach and Laverty were directly motivated by the feminist slogan ‘the personal is political’ but in portraying how ordinary people can turn into revolutionaries there’s no doubt that the aim here is to show politics in personal terms. Continue reading →

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STEVE McQUEEN AND MICHAEL FASSBENDER : HUNGER FOR TRUTH

Filed under: Movies, Politics — Leave a comment
January 12, 2012

HUNGER directed by Steve McQueen (2008)

I’ve been reading a lot about Steve McQueen’s new movie Shame which is released this week.  Pieces about the British born director usually include praise for his debut full length movie, Hunger, released in 2008 which also stars Irish-German actor Michael Fassbender .  While waiting for Fassbender the sex addict, I thought I’d watch him as the IRA hunger striker, Bobby Sands.

And what a remarkable performance it is. There can’t be many actors prepared to starve themselves almost to death to play a role but this is what he does in order to act out Sands’ final 66 days on earth. He embarked on a 10 week crash diet in LA which, by the end, had him surviving on just 600 calories a day. He ended up weighing  59 kg which was almost the same weight as that of Sands when he died and perilously close to the point of no return when your vital organs start giving up.

When you see shots of him with visible bones, the first thought is that this is a clever piece of Photoshop style trickery, but, when you realise he really looked like this, it is doubly shocking. Apparently, many people thought Fassbender was suffering from cancer and it’s amazing that he had sufficient energy to play the final scenes. To embark on such a no holds barred degree of commitment shows the level of belief must have had in McQueen’s movie. You wouldn’t  go through this self-torture for a second-rate production. Continue reading →

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