Land & Freedom

The Wind That Shakes the Barley Winner of the Palme d'Or at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, this gripping drama by Ken Loach (Raining Stones) is set during the early days of the Irish Republican Army, when British occupation of the Irish radicalized many a citizen and caused some to take up arms. Cillian Murphy ...

Hidden Agenda Academy AwardÂ(r) winner* Frances McDormand (Fargo) and Brian Cox (Rob Roy) confront danger and deception at every turn in this "chilling, explosive" (The New York Times)story set in strife-torn Northern Ireland. Winner of the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, Hidd...

Libertarias Spain, July 19, 1936. The War has just begun and women as always play their part in this human tragedy. Maria, an innocent young nun, is forced to leave the convent after the arrival of the revolutionary troops in Barcelona. She takes refuge in a brothel, where she meets a group ...

"Ay, Carmela!"

DEAD FOR NOTHING
Ken Loach's LAND AND FREEDOM won two awards at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival and was also considered as the best European Film of 1995. I do have a tremendous respect for the works of Ken Loach, such directors who handle social, political or historical matters in their films, are necessary. In LAND AND FREEDOM, Ken Loach's intentions were to remind us that the dissensions between the different left-wing Spanish movements were the principal cause of General Franco's victory in 1939 and the fascist dictatorship that ruled Spain until 1975. As I didn't particularly study this tragic period of the history of Spain, I watched LAND AND FREEDOM without any preconceived ideas. The first part of the film is rather boring with interminable debates about collectivism, communism or stalinism. But as soon as the members of the militia understand that their leaders are willing to sacrifice them in the name of political realism, the movie starts to become very interesting because it poses a fundamental question: what for does each member of the militia fight ? Out of idealism, pity for the Spanish people or against Fascism ? A DVD zone History.

An exellent film
Similar in format to Orwells homage to Catalonia the films story surrounds a young Liverpudlian (not someone from Lancashire God knows why someone below wrote that either they didnt bother reading the rear of the DVD or they still think Liverpool is in Lancashire) who goes over to fight on the side of the republicans and ends up fighting with one of the many militas (in this case the POUM) The film stars with a young woman in a council flat in Liverpool calling an ambulance for her sick grandfather, its only on his being taken to hospital she begins to look through his personal belongings to find a part of his history that she previously didnt know. The lack of proper training, the poor arms that they carry, the lack of discipline (one of the soldiers refusing to march) and the endless pointless political infighting (see the scene where they debate over the collectivisation of that land they have captured) are all displayed. One of the most touching scenes is when the battle lines are drawn up between the main communist party and the POUM and Anarchist parties Hart finds himself on the communist lines with Anarchists in the opposite building. As both sides trade insults he hears an English voice. He cries out "Where are you from?" "Manchester" comes the reply "Where are you from?" "Liverpool" Answers Hart. "What are you doing over there?" Asks Hart. "What are you doing over there?" Replies the unknown militia man. At which point gunfire is exchanged and Hart cries out "Enough!" This is not just a propaganda film for the left, the mistakes of the left in Spain are clear enough in the film. Yes, they were fighting with one hand tied behind their backs but after spending much of their time fighting each other was it any wonder the right succeeded in Spain? This is a touching film, not simply a political one. Most of all its the story of one man who with the convition of his beliefs went to fight for what he believed in.

Reality Check
The protagonist in this film is a Lancashire Communist who somehow winds up in a POUM unit. This didn't happen. Communists from England were under discipline to join the International Brigades. The Hart character is supposed to be some sort of working class Orwell. But Orwell was a Trotskyite (not a member of the CPUK) who wrote of brutal slaughter of the Trotskyites (POUM) by the International commissars in "Homage to Catalonia." The killing of Catholics by the so-called Republicans was widespread and huge. In the hundreds of thousands. For a good work of fiction dealing with the Spanish Civil War, check out the trilogy by Jose Maria Gironella starting with "The Cypresses Believe in God." The Republicans lost because the majority of the Spanish people opposed the destruction of their religion, culture, and rights by foreign commissars hostile to the traditions of Spain. The Reds called all their opponents "fascists." But the Nationalists were composed of Christian Democrats, monarchists, a broad spectrum to the right of the Communists, Anarchists, and Socialists on the Republican side. At the onset of the war, the Falange represented one of the smallest parties in the Nationalist coalition. In 1939, Spain was economically far behind Poland. Having visited both countries over the years from 1970 on, I can say that if you have to pick being ruled by the Communists or the Falangists, pick the Falangists. Hart is a good actor and this is not a bad film. But its message is based on a romanticization of the "Republican" side which is far removed from reality. You really need to marvel over that village debate on collectivization of farms. The Spanish people profited greatly from the Republican defeat. As the humorist Tom Lehrer once sang, "Remember the war against Franco. That's the one where every one of us belongs. Though they may have won all the battles, we had all the good songs." !Viva Espana!

Good intentions were covering our guilt
To speak of the Spanish Civil War is extremely difficult today. To speak of it from an English point of view is even more impossible. Yet Ken Loach manages to keep his tone and our interest totally measured and awake from beginning to end. Never he lets us go down into forgetting that we are speaking of one essential defeat of the revolutionary movement in the world in the late 1930s when confronted to the frontal violence from Hitler and Mussolini. And he does remind us of the fact that the Soviet Union never helped the Republicans and that Stalin both refused to hear the call and manipulated the communist party in Spain into dividing the republican movement in order to try and take the control of it all. The point is to wonder whether Stalin and the communist party of Spain knew that it would mean defeat for the republicans, and hence did they want that defeat ? The accusation, even in the form of a question, is crystal clear. Stalin's motivation on the other hand is extremely unclear and Ken Loach prefers not to enter any speculation on the subject. The conclusion is there to be heard and understood and it was a catastrophe in Spain, in Europe and in the world, a catastrophe that never had had and never has had any equivalent in history. But is Stalin the only culprit ? No one can say for sure, and quite a few elements point in a more all-inclusive explanation without entering details : Stalin refused weapons and support, the west refused weapons and support, Hitler and Mussolinin sent their bombers and ammunitions, be it only to test them on a real battlefield. The great merit of Ken Loach's film is that seventy years (sixty years whe the film was shot) or so after the events, the wound is still open, the question has not yet been answered and the dramatic consequences are still there to be assessed and regretted. Our modern world of liberal frenzy is the direct child of what happened in France and Spain, Germany and Italy, England and the Soviet Union seventy years ago. And we are still on the same line of division and antagonism, of change without risk and non-change to avoid any risk, in a world that is gaping and howling for change while hoping this unstoppable change will not put the whole fragile balance of reality in danger. And there is no guarantee against this risk. That's what to be poor is all about today : to be haunted by fear in front of the risk the change we desire may mean. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Paris Dauphine & University of Paris I Pantheon-Sorbonne

One of the Best Political Films Ever Made
I had heard about this film by director Ken Loach a few years before getting to see it, and I can't emphasize how impressive the film is - it not only has realistic war drama, but examines and expresses the complexities of one of the greatest problems in the 20th century - the struggle of working class people for some kind of system other than capitalism that was not tainted with the authoritarianism and anti-humanism of Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin's USSR or Mao's mainland China. Regardless of the downplaying by right-wing "business as usual" extremists like Angel Garralda Ortega (who wrote a review that attacked this movie below), there really was (and still is) a libertarian communist movement - made up of anarchists - that was based on the idea of worker's shrugging bosses and landlords off their back - not forcibly banning exploitation with the use of the state and it's laws, but rather the libertarian idea of not letting oneself be exploited, and not exploiting others - abandoning the essence of capitalism in an anti-authoritarian manner. Also, Mr. Ortega has it wrong - the sporadic killings from the Republican side at the opening of the Spanish Civil War only amounted to some 3 or 4 thousand deaths of Fascist supporting landlords and Spanish catholic church officials who had orders to kill the libertarians and republicans on sight. The anarchist CNT organization opposed such vigilantism and punished those individuals that did it. Contrast this with the hundreds of thousands to millions of tortured and executed republicans, libertarians, liberals, workers, small businessmen, progressive Catholics, protestants, and so on who opposed Franco after the civil war's end in 1939. Also, the POUM was not trotskyist. It was an independent socialist organization that had broken from Trotsky, and it's leading figure, Andrés Nin, was executed by Stalinists - like so many militia fighters such as anarchist Camillo Berneri. In another Amazon review, Jonas Liljeström of Gothenburg, Sweden has explained the basic point I am making better than I could: "Historians who attempt to rehabilitate Franco's reputation often tend to overlook the fact that whereas the Republicans generally tried to avoid unnecessary acts of brutality during the war, the Nationalists did exactly the opposite. Mass killings, rapes, looting and wanton destruction were commonplace as they terrorised the civilians in the newly conquered areas, trying to discourage them from putting up a resistance. The repression of political opponents continued virtually throughout the duration of the Franco regime. The fact that Franco fought communism is no reason to glorify him. After all, Hitler did the same, but the homicidal aspects of his politics are so blatantly obvious that it would be quite impossible to depict him as anything resembling a heroic figure. In my opinion, defending Franco is as outrageous from an ethical point of view as it would be to defend Hitler, Mussolini or Stalin." But I digress... this film accurately shows how there was a popular libertarian socialist revolution in Madrid and Barcelona in Spain in 1936 that was crushed by Stalinists a year later, leading to the inevitable disheartenment and loss of the civil war by those who wanted to preserve liberty and democracy. The actors in this film are likely to be unfamiliar to US viewers, but I know that the lead, Ian Hart, was later in the first Harry Potter film. Be sure to also see the magnificent Spanish Civil War film "Libertarias" directed by Vicente Aranda. It's focus is more squarely on the anarchist CNT, instead of the independent Marxist POUM. Artificial Eye is releasing a region 2 DVD of this film, available from the UK version of Amazon. I very strongly recommend this excellent drama as one of the best ways to learn about the Spanish Civil War.