Vicious circle

Ken Loach won the Palme d’Or in Cannes last month with The Wind that Shakes the Barley and has since been the object of several abusive articles in the British press. He will be unsurprised (and probably untroubled) — his films usually cause a rumpus. This one is set in Ireland in the 1920s, and it is, shall we say, a partial history.

The film’s hero is Damien (Cillian Murphy), a young Irish doctor who takes the oath of the Irish Republican Army after witnessing two brutal attacks by the Black and Tans — one the murder of a close friend, the other the beating of an elderly train guard. The film describes the activities of the ‘Flying Column’, of which Damien becomes a member and then a leader. He and his comrades are resolved to answer the terror imposed by the Black and Tans by inflicting a terror of their own.