Word: revolutionists
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...independence from British rule, which was then being enforced by the Black and Tans, vicious and largely undisciplined soldiers recruited from the demobilized English army and functioning in Ireland as terrorist-enforcers of the status quo. Loach's film, written by Paul Laverty, focuses on a Sinn Fein (or revolutionist) "flying column" operating in County Cork, with special emphasis on a gentle young doctor, Damien (Cillian Murphy) and his more hot-headed brother, Teddy (Padraic Delaney), who is the group's leader. Theirs is a life of midnight raids on British barracks, roadside ambushes, betrayals, captivity (which includes brutal torture...
Disgusting, snarls his revolutionist cellmate Valentin (Raul Julia), who is being tortured to betray his beliefs and his underground comrades. But perhaps he protests too much. For he encourages Luis to keep spinning out his scenario (which is visualized in wickedly parodistic flashbacks). Ultimately Valentin confesses that his revolutionary ardor is no less a romantic fancy than Luis' old movies are. Both are substitutes for the more immediate and commonplace forms of love that elude these fantasists of impossible perfection. And both surrender to a final irony: real life may be the cruelest of all illusions, a fantasy-film star...