Speakers:
KL: Ken Loach
DC: Dave Calhoun
EEJ: Ellen E. Jones
EEJ: Hello and welcome to this, the first in a new series of Barbican ScreenTalks - where we
re-release exclusive interviews with some of the world’s leading filmmakers.
We’ve been recording Q and A sessions after Barbican screenings for decades - building up a
formidable collection of interviews. Now we’ve gone back to the archive, dusted off the tapes,
and will be releasing a new ScreenTalk every month.
Later in the series we’ll hear from the likes of king of surrealism Terry Gilliam, and Amma
Asante, director of Belle and A United Kingdom.
But we start with a man who’s been described as ‘the UK’s foremost political filmmaker’.
Ken Loach has been using film to explore themes of class, conflict, and social change for over
50 years.
In 1966, his TV drama Cathy Come Home provoked such a reaction, it led to a change in the
homeless laws and the creation of the charity Crisis. His prolific filmmaking career includes
Poor Cow, Kes, and the Spanish civil war story Land and Freedom.
In this interview from 2006, Ken Loach talks to Time Out Film editor Dave Calhoun about The
Wind that Shakes the Barley starring Cillian Murphy. This film gave Loach his first Palme D’Or
win at Cannes, but it also marked one of the most controversial periods of an alwayscontroversial career. Like Hidden Agenda, made 16 years earlier, the film was decried as IRA
propaganda by some in the press, a charge that Loach eloquently addresses here.
Set in Cork in the early 1920s, it tells the tale of two brothers – Damien and Teddy – who fight
in a guerrilla war for an independent Ireland. Their struggle against the British eventually
results in a treaty to end the bloodshed, and the establishment of the Irish Free State. But
despite this apparent victory, civil war erupts - and families who fought together, now find
themselves on opposing sides...
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In the interview you’re about to hear, Ken Loach talks about the reaction to this film. He
explains how he used local actors, and Cork locations, for authenticity. And reveals why he
thinks his films are more popular with international audiences.
I’m Ellen E Jones, and this is Barbican ScreenTalks, with Ken Loach…
[Applause]
DC:
Hi everybody! I'd just like to add to that by welcoming Ken Loach here on behalf of the
Barbican this evening.
KL:
Thanks very much.
DC:
I want to start, Ken, by talking about the actual filming of the film last year. You filmed
it entirely in County Cork last – I think I'm right – last July and August, last summer and,
I remember, I came on the set and was very aware that you were using all Cork
locations. Your cast was almost exclusively from Cork and I think where they weren't
was because the characters actually demanded it. And a lot of the extras were people
from the local areas. A lot of the crew were from Cork as well.
So I want to ask you, through making this film and this particular story, there in County
Cork now, 85/86 years on from when it was set, how raw is the memory of that period
of Irish history, of the experience of Black and Tans coming into the area, of the leadup to the Treaty in 1921 and the subsequent Civil War? How raw did it appear from
you talking to people who you were working with and the people who you met?
KL:
I think it was very vivid in people's memories. I mean initially, some people said, ‘Well,
we don't really want to talk about it now because the wounds are still felt’, but, of
course, once people did start to talk, then they did talk and you felt almost every field
had got some story to tell. It was very vivid in people's memories.
When we were reccing, we went to one old farm, miles away from anywhere, down a
single track and the guy came to the door and said, what are we doing, and we
explained and he said, ‘Ah’, he said, ‘I have Tom Barry's book by my bedside. I was
reading it last night’ and reeled off all the people and the incidents. So I think it's very
vivid. Even the school kids know the basic story, which contrasts with this side of the
Irish Sea where people say they know very little about it, which is quite sad really.
DC:
Thinking of those memories and how much it's still in people's memories, as you
experienced it in Ireland, obviously there's the experience of the Black and Tans being
there but how much did you find that the theme of ‘brother against brother’ was
coming up and the memory of that was coming up, which is a theme that you embrace
directly in this film?
KL:
Yes. Well, again, that was very strong. People still say there are pubs that are Free
State pubs and anti-Republican pubs and people talk of families that still haven't
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spoken or family members that still haven't spoken. And it was extraordinarily brutal
when the war turned to the Republican side fighting each other.
In the town we shot at in Bandon, there's a statue to Sean Hales and Sean Hales was a
Free State member of parliament, a member of the Dáil, and he was assassinated.
And his brother, Tom Hales, was a Republican and he'd had his finger nails pulled out
by the British rather as we showed in Teddy's case. So that was brother against
brother.
And there was a case of Kevin O'Higgins who was a member of the Free State
government who signed the execution papers for the man who'd been the best man at
his wedding. And so it was very cruel.
DC:
I'd like to ask you about some of the reactions already been to the film. Obviously it
showed in Cannes in competition and it went on to win the Palme d'Or and, obviously
since then, there's been a lot of commentary both in the newspapers and the radio and
on television as well... about the film, a lot of it fairly negative. I think I read that you... I
think you said, going into Cannes, maybe at one of the early Press conferences or an
interview before, that you did didn't expect any controversy around this film. Is that
true? [Laughter from the audience]
KL:
Well, it was a joke really! [Laughs] I mean, we thought there'd be a bit. We didn't think
it would be as vicious as it was. Before we leave the Palme d'Or, one of the Irish lads in
the film is from a small town and the local paper ran an exclusive. It said, ‘Local Man
Wins Carte d'Or’ [laughter]. It only needed to add that he scooped it and we'd have...
[Laughter]
But the Press reaction was extraordinary and it was over a short few days, just after
we'd won the Carte d'Or [audience laughs]. It was extraordinary! I don't want to give
it air time really by going over it too much but it was very vicious but there are always
idiots who will write kind of vicious stuff and personal abuse.
Two things surprised me. Or there were two things that occurred to us really. One is, it's
one thing for some maverick to write it, it's another for an editor to commission it and
put it in the paper. That’s serious. Like comparing me to a Nazi propagandist or... It’s
very extreme, that. And one writer said he didn't need to see the film to write about it
any more than he needed to ready Mein Kampf to know what a louse Hitler was. It’s
comic but it's very savage and it occurred to us that it is the editors who commission
that and put in and the journalism, there are several examples, I won't bore you by
going into them, where the journalism was just plain bad journalism. They were saying
stuff that just wasn't, just on a factual basis, was incorrect.
But the other point that struck us is that this really is the breeding ground for fascism
because it's fine to attack someone like me because I'm middle-class and white and
have got lots of pals, but to write that kind of abuse about an immigrant community or
asylum seekers or people who are vulnerable, then that becomes, then it’s ‘Get the
bastards out!’ And then it's the breeding ground for fascism and it's a short step to the
BNP. So I think that kind of journalism is the breeding ground for fascism really.
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DC:
I think the point that was mainly... or the theme that was repeated, again and again,
was your treatment of, or the perceived treatment of the British characters in the film,
essentially the troops and also the landowner. I'm sure you were aware that that was
likely to be controversial when you were making it but I was wondering whether, what
other areas of the film, for you, when you were writing it with... when Paul Laverty was
writing it and when you were discussing it, which other areas did you feel were the
most sensitive and you felt needed the most research and...?
Because there are many other themes in there, especially the argument over whether
Ireland should have gone in the socialist direction or not which, to me, seems to be key
to the film and which is probably, to any student of this period, much more
controversial than any depiction of the British, how you interpret that and what your
own opinion of that is? Was that, for example, one area which you were aware was
sensitive?
KL:
Yes, yes. There’s a lot in what you’ve said. On the treatment of the British, just to set the
record straight, we were very anxious to be as truthful as we could, so all the soldiers
that you see – all the British soldiers, certainly all the ones taking a main part – are
British ex-soldiers. And we had two sergeants from the Irish army with us – the British
army wouldn't collaborate, not surprisingly, nor the TA [laughter] – even for a trip
across with free Guinness they wouldn't come, so anyway… And we also had the CO,
the ex CO, from the barracks in Cork – terrific guy, well they all were – and we said to
them, ‘We don't want any crazy heroics. Don't play at being soldiers! This is the
platoon you've got and this is the squad you've got! This is the area, now how do you
do it as professionals? How do you go in? What do you do?’ And they would tell me
how it should be done and then they did it that way. So that was how it was done.
I brought a couple of quotes along thinking that this might come up and, apart from
the specific incident which, of course, we'd absolutely researched, but the kind of things
that were said, at the time, by senior figures, both in the army and in the establishment,
were things like this. This is General Gough, obviously a senior figure in the army,
March 1921, and he wrote this. He wrote, ‘Law and order have given place to a
bloody and brutal anarchy in which armed agents of the Crown violate every law in
aimless and vindictive savagery.’ Now that was General Gough in 1921, just the time
that this was happening.
DC:
So that's coming from the establishment itself?
KL:
That's coming from the establishment! Sir Maurice Hankey, who was Secretary to the
Cabinet, recorded Lloyd George because people were complaining to Lloyd George
and saying, ‘You can't let this stuff go on!’ And Lloyd George's response, according to
the Cabinet Secretary, was this: in his diary, he said, ‘Lloyd George strongly defended
murder reprisals. He showed that there'd been, from time in memorial, been resorted
to in difficult times in Ireland.’ In other words, he was carrying on the policies of the
Elizabethan armies, of Cromwell, down to the present day.
And the commission for the Labour Party went over, not identified with Sinn Féin by any
means, and their report said that, ‘the Tans and Auxies were compelling the whole Irish
people, men, women and children, to live in an atmosphere of sheer terror.’
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Now that's the record of the time, really. So we actually could have gone much further.
We could have pulled teeth out rather than nails.
There was a man, an uncle of one of the men who was working on the film. His uncle
had been shot and then, when he was still alive, tied to the back of a cart and dragged
along a rocky road until he was dead. There was a woman standing with a child in her
arms who was shot. Shot dead, with the child in her arms. You could go on and on and
on.
The other areas that are really, as you say, really interesting and sensitive were... Well,
you mention the socialist strand, the strand epitomised by James Connolly, one of the
leaders of the Easter Rising. And the Easter Rising had both a nationalist and a socialist
element in the leadership and the proclamation and the social programme of the
first Dáil had, as they say in the film, had a very strong, what I guess we would call,
socialist content. They wanted to construct a society where the land was held in
common. Remember, this is just after the October Revolution in 1917, so the ideas are
very current. It's not like some desperate left-wing sect seizing power. This was very
current. That programme was voted on by the majority of the Irish people. So it was a
mainstream series of ideas but then, within the Republican movement, the bourgeois
leadership gained control. And, certainly in West Cork, where we did it, the socialist
element was not particularly strong, but we felt that, to do a film which missed it out,
you'd miss out one of the dynamic elements in the whole process. So that's why Dan
drove his train.
DC:
It seems that a lot of the misguided reaction to the film highlights the danger of taking it
in an anachronistic response of, having an anachronistic reaction to the film as soon as
the words 'British' and 'the IRA' are mentioned, it's immediately assumed by some
commentators that you're talking about the situation now. I think one journalist asked,
‘Why does he hate our country so much?’ So, assuming that, if you make a film which is
critical of the British in the 1920s, you're making a film which is critical of the British
now. So there's that proviso about relating it to these days. I know you've spoken
against the idea that the film is – just to put it simply – actually about Iraq, but surely
there are... I'm interested to hear what you think about themes that are running through
the film to do with occupation and civilian reaction to occupation and how far you do
think they are relevant and how far they did inform you wanting to make the film now?
Because I know it's a film which you've wanted to make for a long time but I'm
wondering whether the situation in Iraq now influenced the actual timing.
KL:
No, it didn't at all. We were working on it before the invasion – and I certainly wouldn't
want to make any glib parallels – obviously, there are big differences, but I think an
army of occupation, which is there against the wishes of the civilian population, certain
things start to happen. The attitude of young men, armed to the teeth, who are
obviously in danger, they will retreat into a kind of bunker mentality. This is what we
heard from soldiers. This is my reporting what I was told. They will then retreat into a
bunker mentality. One act of violence will lead to another act of violence, it will lead to
a bigger reprisal. Then there's the people that they are controlling they start to see as
less than themselves. Otherwise how do you deal with them? And a whole kind of
vicious circle sets up.
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And, currently, we have an army illegally occupying another country. So I guess there
are parallels. Other people have made a parallel in Palestine where, again, an
occupied country, one political group is in conflict with another political group and, in
a sense, the pressures of the occupation and the frustration to the occupation lead to
that kind of conflict, as obviously happened in Ireland, too.
DC:
By the end of this film, the characters of Damien and Teddy very much represent the
divide within the Irish Civil War. Damien represents, you could say, a more idealistic
viewpoint that to continue to fight could lead to a socialist Ireland as well as a free
Ireland, whereas Teddy's point of view seems to be much more, you could say,
pragmatic, much more to do with comfort and security and a belief that the Treaty was
good enough at the time. I was wondering what your thoughts were, and Paul Laverty's
thoughts when writing the script, do you feel you sympathise more with Damien's point
of view? Do you think at that point in Ireland that was actually a lost opportunity for
Ireland, and that that alternative was actually possible and preferable?
KL:
I don't know. I really don't know and we felt it was impossible to say, or at least it was a
cheap shot to say, ‘Well, they should have done this’ or ‘They should have done that!’ I
think people were desperate to live in peace. I think everybody felt... It’s ironic because
those who supported the Treaty felt that the North, the boundary, would dissolve
because it was unsustainable and that it was a staging post. It was a platform and they
could go on to achieve everything they wanted. Some thought that. I guess others
thought, ‘We can keep the property relationships as they are and we can be the
successful Irish businessmen, where, at the moment, we're just dominated by British
business.’ So I guess there was a kind of business viewpoint to the pro-Treaty side.
But the big thing there that was hugely influential was the threat of immediate and
terrible war. And it's exactly what happened in Nicaragua when the Sandinistas
suffered the terror war by the Contras, paid for by the US. And the election came up
and the US said, ‘If you vote the Sandinista back in, this terror will continue!’ So, of
course, they lost the election. And I don't think we can underestimate that.
What was important for us was that both arguments were put as well as they possibly
could, so that both Teddy and Damien are men of integrity and the people around
them. There's no – dare I coin a phrase? – hidden agenda here. They've got nothing
up their sleeve. They're saying what they really believe and there's a logic to both
positions. And that was the cunning of the British evaluating the Treaty. We place it
there, we'll split them down the middle! Which is what they did.
DC:
Do you find it easy to get those scenes of political debate correct dramatically and
passable dramatically? I'm thinking specifically of the scene, towards the end, where
the different ideas floating about to do with the... which lead to the Irish Civil War are
there in a meeting, in a room and I thought, ‘How do you...?’ Do you find that difficult
to deal with dramatically?
KL:
Well, the arguments have to live in the people. They have to live in the people and
there has to be... I mean it's not a scene that you can do without a lot of preparation,
which we did. We worked with historian(s) from Cork University and, obviously, the
people read a lot and we were kind of testing the things out as we were going through
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the film up to that point and testing out people's positions. So that when we came to it,
we knew that Rory would be the plain nationalist who would not bend his knee to the
king come what may, and we knew that Congo was a man who was staking everything
on this. They’d all made huge sacrifices. They weren't going to give up until they'd
really got what they wanted. And we knew that there were some, like Leo, the
character played by Frank Bourke, who was an organiser and a commander and very
thoughtful about how things should be. So, people's positions are being prepared in
advance. They were all familiar with the arguments and Paul's script was… he writes
this kind of dialogue brilliantly, so there was both a personal passion but... well, what
we tried to do, anyway, was to really precisely elucidate the main strands of what was
at stake.
DC:
Were you able to apply your usual method of holding back the script from actors and
shooting chronologically with this film as much as other films?
KL:
Yes! Damien didn't know he was going to die. [Laughter] Not till Dan was shot and
then they lost and then, I think, he thought it then. But once he was caught, once he was
in prison, there was really no way out. But he didn't – oh, it's not important, but in the
last scene between the two brothers, only Teddy had the line – I think only Teddy had
the line – about, ‘Write your letters, you'll be shot at dawn!'‘
DC:
Can I begin to take questions from the audience, please?
KL:
Or opinions! [Laughter]
DC:
True!
Q1:
At the moment, obviously films that have evoked passion in people and sort of shake
the scene up a bit have been produced for a long time but, at the moment, there seems
to be a climate where it's a more mainstream climate in the film industry, at the
moment, particularly with the nominations for Best Film at the Academy last year. Do
you feel, being the sort of director that you are and the sort of films that you direct, do
you feel that this is a good thing for the industry itself?
KL:
Well, I think it's good for the cinema-going public really. It just introduces a bit of
diversity into what's available and the documentaries that are made – the Michael
Moore documentaries and others. There was a beautiful French documentary about a
school.
I think the re-emergence of the documentaries into cinema, whether political or just
observational or whatever, I mean it’s good because it just gives us a better choice. My
feeling, for what it's worth, is that cinema should be absolutely diverse. I'd hate to be
prescriptive and say, ‘Films should be this way, should be that way.’ They should be
absolutely diverse and the tragedy is that the choice is so narrow really.
DC:
Second question, down the front row there, please!
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Q2:
How do you... when you're coming up with a political issue, but you're making an
aesthetic expression of it, how do you not let the work turn into a work of propaganda
or let the politics dominate what you're trying to say aesthetically?
KL:
Well, it's a good question. It’s one that constantly recurs. I think one thing, one factor in
all this is that these are very politicising times. The events that these people went
through absolutely politicised them and that was part of their life. That was part of
their... what they were engaged in were those ideas, were those judgments, were those
loyalties, what they were actually fighting for, the Ireland they wanted…
All that, when you're involved in that kind – I never have been – but when people
involved in that kind of struggle, they become politicised and, therefore, I think that it's
quite legitimate that characters, as they do in real life, express those ideas and fight
over them and loyalties are... personal relationships are broken up because of them,
and so on. And it's an absolutely legitimate subject for drama. I think it's brilliant dra...
I'm not saying this is brilliant, but as a location for drama, it's a brilliant area.
Then it's a question... you still have to develop characters that are rounded, that are
rooted, that have a history, that have a set of relationships, that have their own kind of
personal priorities within that. And that, all wrapped together, is the conflict that you try
to put on the screen.
And the arch of the story, if you get it right, just by telling what happens to these
people, you'd say everything you wanted to say about that subject. Just by them being
who they are, resolving the contradictions that are there at the start of the drama, just
by resolving those contradictions and all the outside forces, again, following the logical
course that they would follow. Then the drama, if it's the right one, has a kind of
inexorable drive to resolution which, in this case, is a tragedy. But I think that's what we
tried to do.
But the problem is when people, everybody who comes to see a film, they bring their
own baggage, like I have baggage that I bring, audiences have baggage. And what's
in their – maybe I should say, what's in your minds - is maybe a predisposition towards
this position, that attitude or a predisposition towards the other. And, therefore, you
read it according to those predispositions. Just in a simple way, I think people often
mistake a character making an argument for a propagandist film and I dispute that
because there are many different arguments in this film. So which one's the
propaganda one?
DC:
Do you think that the further away in time that an audience is and, culturally, from a
politicised culture, the less likely they are to find political drama which is full of political
ideas palatable? Do you think that's probably the case? You make the strong point that
this was a time in Irish history when political debate was current, was vital and was
essential but the more an audience is actually removed from a culture where that's
true, do you think it becomes more difficult for them to accept political drama?
KL:
Yes, I think that's true. Now you're almost given a health warning if anybody's coherent
for three or four sentences. [Laughter] The film has a health warning, ‘Go on! Don't go
to this! You might actually listen to someone speak!’ Dreadful!
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DC:
Can I take one, there, please?
Q3:
If we transpose your story and characters into more recent times in Ireland, do you
think any of your characters could have carried out the bombing in Omagh?
KL:
I think that's a hypoth… it’s impossible to say. You could have asked, ‘Could they have
carried out the Dublin and Monaghan bombings – Monaghan bombings, actually,
which were, put together, the biggest, you know – I'm sure as you will know – the
biggest atrocity in recent troubles carried out, the evidence of the, people say, by
collusion between the security forces and the loyalists. I guess people get driven into
extremes. A lot of water's gone under the bridge since these events and the water that
went under the bridge drove people to further extreme positions, I guess.
Q3:
I ask the question because I think you're at pains in your films to really show the reality
of violence and warfare and I think when, like me, you're removed from that situation,
it's very difficult to understand and yet, somehow, there must be a way of coming to
understand why acts of violence like that occur in a civilian society. Like Iraq, for
example.
KL:
Yes, I think it's very complex. People get driven into extreme positions. When we were
talking about the armies of occupation, I think that one can see how the culture arises,
that the people that are being occupied are treated as less than human. I didn't jot it
down but there was a very interesting report by British Intelligence, I think it was the
official report after these events in, again, in the early '20s and it referred to the Irish as
having a lower form of civilisation, and of their cowardice and their dishonesty. Now, if
that's the culture in the official report, god knows what the culture in the barracks is… of
how people are treated. And then if you treat people like that, then you can do terrible
things to them. Witness the massacre in Haditha, the My Lai massacre in Vietnam.
History is littered with these examples, isn't it? And, as you say, the Omagh bombing
and the Dublin and Monaghan bombings.
DC:
Can I take another one up the top, please, at the top right?
Q4:
Sorry, Ken, I just want to ask a quick question. Do you think, actually, journalists should
be held responsible for their actions, bearing in mind there was a highly respected
programme, two weeks ago, three weeks ago, on a certain channel, and an
interviewer was quite antagonistic towards you? And it's a quite respected, cultural
programme. I know – stupid question, but...
KL:
[Laughs] Yeah, no, well that's part of the knock about of doing this sort of stuff. People
will have a go. It doesn't bother me too much. If you draw blood, then it shows you're
doing something.
But, I think editors should, obviously, but the editor's there because the people who
own the newspapers want the editor there, knowing the kind of judgments they will
make.
And the same is true of news editors in broadcasting. They're there because they know
the rules. More precisely, they pick the point of balance in any argument right at the
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point which it will satisfy the establishment and that's why the editors get their jobs, it
seems to me.
That’s why, all the 30-odd years that we've been hearing news stories about Northern
Ireland, we've never heard the question of partition. I've never heard the question of
partition put. Should Ireland be divided? And yet, it's the basis of the conflict in the
North. I've never heard that put because they pick the point of balance. The question is
put, ‘Why should the Unionists do business with the Republicans when they've still got
weapons?’ Is usually the question, as it's framed. But whether there should be partition
or not is never asked. So, I think...
Sorry, I'm going off the point rather but I think your point is, ‘Should journalists be held
responsible?’ Well, that'd be a great day! [Laughter]
DC:
Can I take the question I missed there? Yeah, that was you.
Q5:
Yeah, we don't have a great tradition of political film-making in this country and I know
that a lot of your films have been financed almost entirely from abroad and I
wondered if that was the case with this film?
KL:
Yes, the producer triumphantly secured, I think, over 20 different sources of finance,
mainly from Europe, some from Britain. The Film Council were supportive. Some from
Ireland. And the advantage of having different sources is that nobody has you by the
throat because if you've got one person holding all the money, they can tell you what
to do. If it's split around and somebody from here says, ‘Well, I don't really like this bit,
could you do something different?’ We can say, ‘Well, that's the French’s favourite bit
really, so you've got to go and see them! [Laughter] It can work to our advantage,
though it’s quite…
DC:
I think that question puts the finger on the fact that many of your films have been very
popular, more popular, on the Continent and Europe than here. In your experience of
that, have you come up with a reason or a theory as to why that has sometimes been
the case?
KL:
I don't know. You can't really be exotic in your own home, can you? You're just, ‘Oh
god, it's just the stuff we see every day!’ Whereas, in another country, it's still familiar, I
think. The dramas are familiar but it has the slightly exotic touch of being from another
country. I think that's a small part of it.
I think a bigger part is that, particularly places like France and Italy have different
cinema traditions. You think of the French, René Clair and Renoir and then the French
New Wave and then, with Italy, with the Neorealists and Eastern Europe cinema with
Weider and Russian cinema, Swedish cinema with Bergman, Buñuel. It’s a very rich
cinema tradition and quite an intellectual… I wouldn't claim to be intellectual in the way
they were but it's quite an intellectual tradition. Whereas, here, we do tend to look
down on that a bit and I think, because of our shared language, we're much more
susceptible to American dominance.
DC:
I'm going to take a question from that side now. I'll come back. Yes!
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Q6:
I was just thinking… the one voice that didn't occur in the film was a voice calling for
pacifism. Now maybe at the time no-one argued for pacifism and maybe in that state
of a military occupation it's impossible to take that position, but were you at all tempted
to try and introduce someone who could have actually said something that, if they'd
been listened to, then maybe everything could have turned out with a lot less
bloodshed?
KL:
We didn't think about it mainly because we didn't come across it in our reading and
talking to people. I think the pacifist option is really quite difficult when, as an act of
policy, as the guy said, the civilian population is being terrorised. I think it's quite
difficult to make that stick. Obviously, I don't know enough about Gandhi in India but
that obviously was an element there but we couldn't trace anything like that in Ireland.
Q6:
Maybe Gandhi learned it after watching what happened in Ireland!
KL:
Well, maybe he did, yes. [Laughter]
DC:
Can I take a question there, please!
Q7:
Hello! It seems to me that there was a lot of material and viewpoints you were trying to
capture in the film. It seemed like it was quite difficult, I think, to sort of balance it
altogether and I was just wondering if there were any scenes that you were kind of
battling over and that ended up on the cutting room floor and what were they?
KL:
Yes, there were quite a lot that we shot and didn't put in. There were several little short
scenes but nothing really major. There was a scene when Sinéad is taking the message
right early on and she's stopped on the road by a group of soldiers and they have
some banter with her because she's a pretty girl but it didn't really work very well so we
dropped it. It was quite loaded. It wasn't just good-natured chat. So we didn't cut it out
because it made the Tans look good or anything. We just cut it out because,
dramatically, it just didn't work. That was it, really. We had to shoot it very fast. We had
35 days to do it which was pretty quick as films go. So we had to be pretty disciplined
about it.
DC:
We'll take a question there, please.
Q8:
As (to) the reactions you got, do you not wish that, maybe, you could have pushed the
film further? As you received these reactions anyway, could you have pushed it further
maybe from what you'd heard and the stories?
KL:
Could we have pushed it further? Well, we did the film that we felt we needed to
make... we ought to make. So no, there was no further point we wanted to go to. We
just felt, for those two men and for that column, that was the story. That was the story.
Because you know – implicit in the film is the fact that the Republicans are going to
lose, that the Free State is going to be established. So, in a sense, that's the end of that
story for them and the tragedy reaches its conclusion when Damien is shot. And, as he
falls, those ideas fall with him really.
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DC:
Obviously the film is being released here tomorrow and it's being released
simultaneously in Ireland, I think, on many, many more, many more prints. It's going to
go on out many more screens which seems, in many ways, natural, as well as a
reflection of our distribution system, probably, as well. I was wondering how, we've
talked about the reaction, some of the pre-release reaction there's been in this country,
have you got much of a sense of a reaction in Ireland, of a different reaction or of a …
commentary?
KL:
Yes. Oh, the reaction in Ireland has been extraordinary. It’s absolutely been
extraordinary. A lot of newspaper pieces, both supportive – mainly supportive, I have
to say and some critical, naturally. There's a long discussion to be had about Irish
revisionist... Irish historians who are – which is a long... It's a good discussion but it's
probably not for now. So there have been some critical voices, some really terrific
responses.
Danny Morrison, who I've not met but have corresponded with, but he wrote a piece
saying that he and a fellow Republican did not see it at all as a recruiting sergeant for
the IRA but sat and grieved really through it. And I think that, given the story of those
years, it seemed to us a very appropriate response, really.
DC:
One more question, I think, from the audience because we're going to have to wrap
up. Take one down there.
Q9:
In terms of your personal philosophy and, particularly, your politics and the way you
make films these days, how far do you feel you've come since Cathy Come Home?
[Laughter]
KL:
Oh god! I don't know how to answer that, to be honest! I mean, it's been a long road,
really, with a few ups and downs. Cathy Come Home was a pretty crude piece of filmmaking and the biggest change was working with a cameraman called Chris Menges
who taught me to look at light and that what happened in front of the camera was
more important than what had happened within the camera. And so what we've
worked at, over the years, is to set up something that has some emotional truth as well
as physical truth about it in front of the camera that is played out in front of the
camera, which you then try and photograph with some empathy.
And, also, since working with Paul Laverty, who's the writer I've worked with for a long,
long time now – nine or ten years! – we've become much more interested in the kind of
psychological aspects of the characters and their maturity and the kind of roots that
they go back to. So, we've wrestled with that, really.
And like the two brothers in this – how can I put it? – there's a kind of hinterland there
that, I hope, sort of makes everything ring true, although we didn't put a huge amount
of it in the film, but there’s… we hope there's a kind of iceberg, submerged part to their
relationship which is just hinted at, even before the audience know they're brothers,
when Damien's taking the oath, Teddy says to him, ‘I knew you wouldn't get that train,
I'd have kicked your arse if you if you had!’ Which, in a way, is the kind of patronising
thing an older brother can say to his kid brother.
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And, by the end, Damien's eyes hold him and Teddy has to look down. And, in a way,
we felt that was one way of reading the film, that that relationship which had started as
kids when they were the best of mates and then the one gets sent away and, when he
comes back, has to prove himself as the older brother, the man of action. And so, in a
way, we just felt... or tried to imply a lot of roots there, going deep, and I suppose that
aspect of it we've got more and more interested in.
DC:
Have you and Paul Laverty found a way of working which you now bring to each film
or does it change a lot?
KL:
It changed a bit because he lives in Spain [laughter] and so a lot of to-ing and fro-ing
has to go on. No, we just knock it backwards and forwards really. But Paul writes it. I
wouldn't want to claim any credit for the writing.
DC:
I think we're going to have to wrap up there, so I was just going to thank you, Ken
Loach, for being here tonight! [Applause]
KL:
Yes and thank you! Thank you! [Applause]
EEJ:
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