03.27.07 5:00 AM CDT
• Movies
• Jamie Malanowski
If you get the chance, take the opportunity to catch Ken Loach’s The Wind That Shakes the Barley. Set in Ireland in 1920, the film is a well-done account of a small group of people who are being subjected, and their contributions to a larger effort to throw off the oppression. Loach keeps a tight focus on a young doctor named Damien (played by Cillian Murphy) and a group of men from his village, which keeps the story very immediate. When Damien has to kill someone, the moment does not get carried off by a swell of music or on a flight of rhetoric; you feel the cold steel trigger on your fingertip, too.
The film is not just a traditional drama. Loach makes real the connection between the fighting (and the pain, and the suffering) and the larger political issues, the ever-dimming line that defines what’s worth dying for, and as importantly, what’s worth killing for. There was a time in this country when that seemed like a fairly easy question to answer, but as we’ve seen in Ireland, in Israel, in Iraq, in the Balkans, in Africa, as we’ve seen in John Muhammad and Timothy McVeigh, once the killing starts, it’s very hard to stop.
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War can be broken down into three motivations: land, resources, and honor. The first always ends in future confict, the second always ends in future negotiations, and the latter always ends in the possibility of peace. But when we examine honor, we invariably turn to history. Sting of "The Police" sang "History will Teach Us Nothing," but ultimately there are no teachers, no leaders, no masters. Bob Dylan whined about "The Masters of War." Even Bob Marley complained about honor in "The Heathen," from the album "Exodus" (TIME magazine's best album of the 20th century). The lines go: "rise o fallen fighters, rise and take your stance again. 'Cause he who fight and run away/ live to fight another day." The ebb and flow of warfare is not all the noble charge into the fray, nor all linear conquering. When warfare is honorable, the battlefield is left as a monument to Peace, not to war. And ultimately, the United States fights for Peace. A warrior fights for war. When we honor our moments of peace in this nation and abroad, we recall that the warriors continue their battles more for the sake of war than for territory or resources. And that is why our men are different than warlords: when others turn to opiate, our women and men in the armed forces strive to keep a clear head so as to recall what remains of honor at the remains of the day.