Family as 'Dwelling' in The Wind that Shakes the Barley

Sorry I wasn't able to be in class today. Figured it was better that I not get you all sick. :/ I know you probably moved on to discussion of Cracking India, but I wanted to wrap up some thoughts on The Wind that Shakes the Barley.

In class last Wednesday, we discussed the differences between Teddy and Damien’s choices to fight for the IRA. I said initially that I thought Damien was motivated more by ideology (the belief that all men should be treated equally and with dignity, and the anger that inevitably came when other men violated that belief), while Teddy was driven more by pride (nationalistic and individualistic). I felt all through the movie that Damien fought because of, or on behalf of, others, while Teddy fought for his own sake, to defend his manhood. Maybe that assessment is not entirely fair; Teddy had to suffer a lot of pain (and give up all his fingernails) during the fight. But the instant that the British gave a little bit (in the Anglo-Irish Treaty), and that Teddy’s efforts for Ireland could not be deemed a total failure, he concedes. He stops fighting even though the Ireland that he was supposedly fighting for still did not exist independent of Britain. Damien, though, holds fast to the fight for Irish independence, despite his initial aversion to violence.

From the beginning of the film, it is clear that Damien is more gentle by nature than his brother. He is a care giver, a doctor by trade, and plans to leave Ireland entirely to go to school in London. However, right before he leaves, he witnesses the death of a close friend by the hands of the British, and the beating of a railway guard in an Irish train station. Ironically, his complete abhorrence of unnecessary violence (and his empathy for the innocent) is, at least partially, what drives him to fight. We, as viewers, in turn completely empathize with Damien at this point. We understand his decision to fight, despite his choice to sacrifice a career opportunity.

As the movie progresses, Damien’s reluctance to kill becomes more and more apparent, especially when he “has” to shoot his friend Chris Reilly. We recognize that Damien is sacrificing his sense of self, changing who he is and what he feels he can do, for the IRA. But is he really fighting for the IRA, and for Irish independence? Is he fighting, as I initially thought, for ideals of justice and equality? Before he almost leaves for London, Teddy and other friends beg him to stay. Was the entreaty of his brother(s) too much to refuse? We also learn more about the nature of his relationship with Sinead. Was his love for her a factor in his return? Given what we observe to be true about Damien, that he is fundamentally kind, caring and self-sacrificing, and that he has lived with and around Teddy, Sinead, and his other friends his entire life, it makes sense that he would feel completely wrong leaving them to pursue a career, especially in such a dangerous and violent political climate. His love for his family defines him. I think it is essentially this love, and the home that love creates, that he is fighting for. In my mind, this is why his political reaction to the Anglo-Irish treaty feels forced and unnatural (as opposed to the same reaction from Dan which feels empowering and natural--and results in one of the best lines in the movie [“the accents of the powerful and the color of the flag” line]). This is also why the ending of the film is so awful. The family for which Damien was fighting betrays him, and so he ends up dying for something that he was never really fighting for in the first place. His last letter to Sinead is real, and especially heartbreaking because it contains glimpses of truth in an utterly confused world. The truth in the movie comes from love born out of familial community. Any true, authentic community in the film centers around family, and not nationality or political ideology. This, I think, is why the film is essentially a critique of nationalism.

According to Smythe, a person “negotiates her/his identity in relation to a range of competing social and political discourses, and this process of negotiation emerges in terms of her/his use of space” (15). However, he also reminds us that “space itself is dialectically produced” (15). In other words, like Heidegger thought, space is created by horizontal and vertical dimensions: a horizonal place which is “determined by the state and socio-political discouse, and a vertical place “connoting the subject’s existential reality” (2). The house, or dwelling, is where these dimensions and ideas are negotiated to form a person’s identity. I think family or familial community is a key part of Relph’s idea of ‘dwelling:’ a “base to set down Being and to realise our possibilities” (3). Smythe holds that “all that is ’authentic’ in the way of human art and culture emerges from the reality of dwelling” (3). Here I think the film really rings true; Damien’s authentic being was rooted in family, and a nationalistic war uprooted his foundation.

When a war over ‘empirical place,’ or the space you can see, occurs between conflicting factions (in the movie’s case- conflicting nationalities), knowledge of ontological place (or individual identity) is prevented. We see this in the movie: Teddy becomes swept up in the British political movement and Damien is killed. In war over place, there is no resolution of horizontal and vertical place, to use Heidegger’s terms. Opportunity for individual identity, or ontological ‘Being’ is lost.

Though Heidegger doesn’t say this, perhaps the movie helps to imply it: that without a certain horizontal place, vertical place cannot exist. Socio-political warfare disrupts every kind of space (no safe spaces in the film, as Jae said in his post). The home space, creating family community and the security and freedom that comes with that community, is the best opportunity individuals have to find their identity (or vertical place), but even that is destroyed by the film’s end. When Damien dies, so does our hope for a safe space.