The Wind That Shakes the Barley

In all honesty, I've watched it while doing three other things because I found it rather slow and cruel, and I could barely understand the Irish accent.
It caused a stir here in Britain after winning at Cannes in 2006 because it portrays its citizens in a rather brutish light (towards the Irish back in the 1920's). Granted it takes a certain amount of thick skin, discipline, determination and bold initiative to maintain a huge Empire for such a long time, but unnecessary cruelty is not one of these requirements by my book (but maybe that's why I don't rule an empire as we speak).
So in the opening scene of the movie a young Irish man is killed mercilessly because he refuses to say his name in English. After the incident, his friends gang up to form the local Resistance and, while they are not perfectly motivated in some of their actions, it becomes clear why things have turned so sour in that part of the world. The fascinating Cillian Murphy carries the film as a doctor turned fighter and as brother to one of the founders of the Resistance who, in a twisted sort of fate, becomes the enemy.
Probably one of the harder to digest scenes is the one where the lads shoot a young friend from their village for turning them in to his landlord out of fear because "it's a proper war and he betrayed us." It's not hard because of goriness, but of its intimacy. They try to not take it lightly, and they end up becoming too cruel on their side. The other is when a farmer's family from the village is brutalized by a gang of " soldiers" but they have no ammunition left due to an earlier attack and thus are left watching helplessly. What I also found disturbing was the act of cutting the hair of the younger woman, in a similar fashion to the concentration camp practices during World War 2.
Irish landscapes sweetly appease the tearful eye, not with the obvious, overwhelming beauty we are generally used to, but with a quiet, cosy feel.
Oh, and the title comes from a song they sing at the wake. Of all posters, I picked the one in Spanish. It has a nice ring to it " El Viento que Acaricia el Prado."