.jeri.

Thanks to some interesting comments about this movie and its recommendation by a few people, I rented The Wind That Shakes the Barley, a movie about young Irish men who are early members of the IRA. I don't pretend to be an authority on the history/opinions of this time in history, but I don't think one needs to be for this movie, which seems to make its emphasis on the reality and sadness of how this conflict slowly changed from country against country to friend against friend. And, in this story specifically, brother is pitted against brother when the cause they fight for splits into two movements. Everyone begins with the same goals for their country, but different methods and ideas of how those goals can be achieved break them apart and cause immense sadness.

I've heard about/viewed the Irish conflict in many different formats, but none that made quite as much of an impact on me. It personalizes the conflict by its setting - the movie is set in a rather small town, and when the two different sides emerge, it's incredibly painful to see how the conflict becomes more important than the ties that they have. When we see young men have dinner at a family's home, only later to be killing that family's son, it's that personal level - how the mourning mother knows her son's killers well - that makes the movie so effective.

A whole lot of sadness, The Wind That Shakes the Barley takes the conflict to the farthest possible extreme by placing two brothers on opposite sides, and especially in the way the movie ends. But that extreme makes it effective and shows how devastating the results can be when loved ones lose sight of each other when fighting for their beliefs (and get carried away).