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By Cole Smithey
“The Wind That Shakes
The Barley”
 As
winner of the 2006 Cannes Film
Festival Palme d’Or, Ken Loach’s
film enables a look forward by
looking back in time. Set in West
Cork, Ireland in 1920, the story
fixes on the strife within a group
of Irish freedom fighters, the
IRA’s Flying Column, attempting
to reclaim Ireland’s independence
from Britain’s cruel Black and
Tan squads occupying their lush
land. The formerly apolitical
Damien O’Donovan (Cillian Murphy)
gives up a budding career as a
physician to join the resistance
with his fiercely idealistic brother
Teddy (Padraic Delaney) whose
familial and political loyalties
will be sorely tested by the story’s
end. It evokes a lesson that overzealous
governments refuse to learn —
occupied people always fight back
with more at stake and nothing
to lose.
Movie Trailer
After a game of “hurling,” a
group of Irish players arrive
at a nearby farmhouse where a
band of armed British troops trap
them and violently demand the
names and addresses of each man.
One of the men, Mícheál
Ó Súilleabháin,
refuses to speak English in an
act of snarling defiance that
soon costs him his life. Angered
by the impotence of their authority
by intimidation, the soldiers
take Mícheál into
a barn where they torture and
kill him off-screen.
Still intent on leaving Ireland
for Britain to practice medicine,
Damian waits at a train station
where Black and Tans demand to
board, in spite of the Irish Transport
and General Workers’ Union policy
of not transporting any British
military personnel or supplies.
The soldiers exact physical revenge
on the train’s unyielding driver
Dan (Liam Cunningham) and stationmaster.
The episode cracks Damian’s career
resolve and he returns to his
brother to defend Ireland rather
than abandon it.
Alongside Damian’s loyalty to
Ireland, is his love for Sinead
(well played by Orla Fitzgerald)
whose family farmhouse serves
as a central symbol of idyllic
Irish rural life tainted by British
imperialism. Ken Loach supports
an anti-war theme with the human
connection that grows between
Damian and Orla. The tender relationship
is toppled during a gut-wrenching
scene wherein a squad of Tans
mercilessly beat Orla while Damian
and his comrades watch helplessly
from a nearby hillside. Outnumbered,
the men of the resistance can
only watch in horror as Orla endures
the humiliating physical attack.
Loach is careful to keep the scene
in a long shot that puts the audience
at the same distance as Damian’s
point of view. It’s consistent
with the way that Loach refrains
from glorifying violence throughout.
Loach’s frequent script collaborator
Paul Laverty efficiently articulates
the goals of the guerrilla movement
through fictional composite characters.
Of the 11-man Flying Column group
that Teddy leads, Dan is the chief
mouthpiece of executed socialist
leader James Connolly’s progressive
ideals that were motivated by
ending oppression of the poor,
rather than protecting Ireland’s
national identity. Damien is quick
to recognize and side with Dan’s
vision for a workers’ republic
that extends beyond the resistance
group’s current struggle.
“The Wind That Shakes The Barley”
shares more than a little in common
with Paul Verhoeven’s latest masterpiece
“Black Book.” Both films look
unflinchingly inside the weaknesses
of resistance movements betrayed
by disorganization and greed.
Ken Loach has said that his film
is a small step toward the British
confronting its imperialist history
so that, perhaps, if we tell the
truth about the past, we can tell
the truth about the present.
The film is an exceptional work
of vigorous cinematic art filled
with dynamic performances by an
all-Irish cast. At 70, Ken Loach
is as steadfast a filmmaker as
ever. I defy anyone who gives
the film the attention it deserves
to deny that it is his best film.
CV
‘Vacancy’
Movie Trailer
It’s a classic set-up. A young
divorcing couple gets lost on
a dark back road and their car
breaks down after a local yokel
messes around under the hood.
Walking two miles in the middle
of the night to a desolate motor
inn puts David (Luke Wilson) and
Amy (Kate Beckinsale) in a grungy
motel room complete with surveillance
cameras and VHS snuff films of
former guests being butchered
by masked men. Unfortunately,
the filmmakers don’t develop “Vacancy”
much past the opening act. Plot
craters open up like sinkholes
after a flood as Mason (Frank
Whaley), a creepy night manager,
and his two masked cohorts terrorize
the couple by knocking loudly
on their doors and walls. That’s
right, LOUDLY! Even for a trashy
little hide-and-seek movie, “Vacancy”
is a disappointing excursion.
There’s a current spate of movies
dabbling with the idea of snuff
films as a tantalizing topic.
“American Cannibal” is a worthy
satire while “The Condemned” is
a barely worthy exploitation job.
“Vacancy” is unworthy horror.
In 1983, David Cronenberg incorporated
all this and more in a nasty little
picture called “Videodrome.” Even
by today’s standards, “Videodrome”
retains its shock value due to
Cronenberg’s ingenious ability
to impose a futuristic mentality
over sex, violence and “reality”
TV. In an age when anyone with
a computer can go online and witness
people being decapitated at the
hands of deranged terrorists,
“Vacancy” comes on like a postdated
stab at provoking naive gasps.
The picture breaks a golden
rule of dramaturgy that a gun
exposed in the first act must
go off in the third. Blood-curdling
screams of a woman’s frantic voice
greet David and Amy when they
first walk into the motel’s lobby.
They are comforted to learn that
the wretched cries come from a
“movie” that Mason watches in
his multi-monitor anteroom. The
impetus for the violent shrieking
from Mason’s flick becomes clear
when they play a videotape of
a woman being tortured and murdered
in the very same room that they
occupy. The filmmakers are careful
to let canned screaming convey
the “real death” aspects of the
video while we wait dutifully
for the snuff-film-within-the-movie
to emerge within the context of
David and Amy’s story — reasonably
during in the climax. But the
pledged event never transpires.
Instead, Amy and David represent
dim thinking even by slasher film
standards when they discover a
trap door in their bathroom that
leads into a tunnel that runs
to Mason’s office. The frightened
pair forgets to grab a pistol
hanging over the office door before
being chased back to their room.
As the master of scary festivities,
Mason is a textbook psycho that
Frank Whaley (“Pulp Fiction”)
pushes into the realm of caricature
with oversized glasses and a mustache
with a life of its own. Whaley’s
near comic performance does little
to distract from the keystone
cops aspect of the two generic
monster-men that bumble around
the grounds and disappear for
long stretches of time.
Director Nimrod Antal made an
international splash with his
Hungarian film “Kontroll,” a drama
about a crew of misfits wandering
the Budapest subway system. Unfortunately,
Antal has no instinct for horror,
specifically for layering information
and suspense toward shocking emotional
crescendos. You can’t correctly
call “Vacancy” a horror movie.
What newbie screenwriter Mark
Smith has generated is a disconnected
hodgepodge of unsupported scary
elements that indicate rather
than gain momentum. Snuff films
are not good for your mental health.
This movie is just not good. CV
By Cole Smithey
‘The Reaping’
Movie Trailer
“The Reaping” is a would-be horror
movie that defies its own anemic
logic. The screenwriters set the
story in the “Deep South” as the
only place in the country where
a population might embrace the
plagues of Exodus to the extent
of killing its own children. A
river turns to blood in the fictitious
small-town of Haven, La., where
creepy schoolteacher Doug Blackwell
(David Morrissey) calls upon professional
miracle debunker Katherine Winter
(Hillary Swank) to visit and explain
the strange occurrence. An abandoned
little blonde girl/devil doll
named Loren (AnnaSophia Robb)
runs aimlessly through the area’s
swampy back woods after being
blamed by townsfolk for the death
of a boy at the river’s edge before
it turned crimson red.
Katherine suffered a crisis
of faith after her husband and
daughter were murdered in Sudan
while the family was there on
a religious mission, yet constant
flashbacks to that chapter of
her past provide no insight to
the story at hand. The filmmakers
furnish a gratuitous “Exorcist”
allusion in the guise of Father
Costigan (Stephen Rea) whose photos
of Katherine with her family in
Sudan spontaneously combust to
form an upside-down sickle when
placed together. Rea, who has
given the kiss of death to as
many films as have endured his
graceless presence, serves an
irrelevant subplot that never
pays off. To this end, the whole
film is made up of detached episodes
interspersed with raining frogs,
lice, maggots, dying cows, people
breaking out with boils, locusts
and the murder of children — although
the screenwriters inexplicably
play this tenth plague climax
as something that the locals have
participated in for years. For
audience members not keeping count,
the picture waffles on the Bible’s
plagues of raining rocks and constant
darkness. I took it as a show
of mercy, considering how long
the movie already seems.
A crucial plot-point is lifted
from “Rosemary’s Baby” when Doug
takes advantage of hosting Katherine
and her ineffectual sidekick Ben
(Idris Elba) in the shelter of
his moss and mold-covered gothic
mansion. On a night when Ben is
away, Doug drugs Katherine and
rapes her, although it’s never
concretely divulged whether the
event is a nightmare or an actual
violation. As such, director Stephen
Hopkins (“The Life and Death of
Peter Sellers”) commits an irresponsible
narrative act that negates all
significance, save for the sequel
that the situation indicates at
the film’s denouement.
The Oscars that Hillary Swank
won for “Boys Don’t Cry” and “Million
Dollar Baby” do not acknowledge
her severely limited acting range.
Swank had the good fortune of
giving two strong performances
in two good movies, but has tread
water through every other role
she’s played — the worst being
her wayward period piece “The
Affair of the Necklace.” Here,
as in her miscast roles in “Insomnia”
and “The Black Dahlia,” Swank
is nothing more than an obedient
prop being positioned in front
of the camera where she visibly
seeks approval. The antithesis
of a Cate Blanchett type of actress,
Swank defaults to presenting,
rather than representing, characters
she doesn’t understand. Her instinct
is always to play emotion over
intellect. It’s a recipe for failure
when the source material is mediocre
at best. That isn’t to say that
the text for “The Reaping” is
anything other than an insulting
piece of unintelligible hackwork.
In a movie with no purpose beyond
small-scale grotesque spectacle,
I can only imagine its purpose
as a cinematic waiting room for
the end of the world where the
guy in charge isn’t capable of
counting to 10. CV
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