aking the Palme d'Or at last year's Cannes Film Festival, The Wind That Shakes the Barley is a commendable study of the power of the imperialist to upset the freedom struggles of Ireland, circa 1920. Director Ken Loach and writer Paul Laverty have produced a brilliant movie that shows what it was like with Ireland as a house divided.

Loach's movie takes place in the damp, green lushness of County Cork on Ireland's southwestern countryside, with the film's main characters - two very different brothers - battling the British occupation. The brothers - Damien (Cillian Murphy), a young physician with a deep sense of duty for his country, and Teddy (Padraic Delaney), less educated but a natural leader who loathes the British Black and Tans (the British "peacekeeping" troops) - ultimately find themselves at odds over what constitutes true freedom.

The movie opens with Damien and his friends play hurling, an Irish sport similar to lacrosse. As they return home, they are violently attacked by British soldiers, who even go so far as to beat one of Damien's friends to death merely because he speaks Irish rather than English. Things are getting out of hand quickly and the time has come to fight; so the two become reluctant fighters.

We'll soon witness painful scenes of the IRA dealing with their traitors, with Loach getting right the horror of the occupation; British soldiers and imported mercenaries beat people to death for refusing to state their name and occupation in the language of their occupiers, or pulling out a man's fingernails one by one with a pair of rusty pliers to try to get a confession. As the IRA grow stronger, the fighting gets more and more brutal, until both sides sign a treaty to end the bloodshed. However, some (including Damien) view the treaty as a betrayal and civil war soon erupts.