Michael Dwyer witnesses Ken Loach's maverick approach on the set of his War of Independence film which he is shooting in Cork
'We call it getting Loached," says Liam Cunningham. "You just throw out the rulebook, man, and it's great. Normally, we actors get our scripts in advance and we work out the arc of our characters. With Ken, you're basically hired as a person to be the character. Sometimes you get the script the day beforehand, but other times you don't get any. You just show up, get into gear, roll the cameras and see what happens. It's an extraordinary way of working."
The camera stopped rolling in Co Cork yesterday evening on the new Ken Loach film, The Wind That Shakes the Barley, a drama set during the War of Independence and featuring Cunningham, Cillian Murphy and Padraic Delaney in the principal roles.
Visiting the set of the film in Bandon last week, it was clear how different a Loach production is from that of any other film director. The only rules are egalitarianism and commitment. There are no stars in a Ken Loach film, and no trailers, and (because he refuses to use the term) no extras.
Everybody on the set is part of a collective endeavour that uses drama to raise and explore serious issues. Loach makes his own rules. And while most shooting schedules are determined by maximising availability of actors and locations, he insists on shooting his films in sequence, even while working within the constraints of low budgets.
Watching Loach last week as he quietly, politely prepared his cast and crew for an important scene in his new film - a heated debate on the Treaty - the thought occurred that if one were to find an equivalent to him in Ireland, the place to look is not in the film industry but on the backbenches of Dáil Éireann, where Socialist Party TD Joe Higgins sits. Both men are articulate and deeply committed to socialism.
Loach, who will be 70 next year, is from Warwickshire and read law at Oxford before joining the BBC as a trainee director in 1963. Within five years, he had made the powerful TV drama Cathy Come Home and two cinema films, Poor Cow and his masterpiece, Kes.
His admirable body of work has focused on the themes of poverty and unemployment (Riff-Raff, Raining Stones, Sweet Sixteen), child custody (Ladybird, Ladybird), Northern Ireland (Hidden Agenda), the Spanish Civil War (Land and Freedom), Nicaragua (Carla's Song), alcoholism (My Name is Joe), immigrant janitors in Los Angeles (Bread and Roses), and a troubled inter-racial love affair in the recent Ae Fond Kiss.
Many of his films have aroused controversy, which is hardly surprising given their directness and challenging nature, but quiet-spoken as he is, Loach can give as good as he gets. This was amply demonstrated in a remarkable verbal tennis match between him and the late film critic Alexander Walker, a native of Northern Ireland, at the Cannes Film Festival press conference for Hidden Agenda in 1990.
Returning to Irish politics for The Wind That Shakes the Barley may well plunge Loach back into controversy, but he is quite philosophical about it.
"History is contemporary," he says. "Your understanding of history confirms what you think of the present. It's not neutral. I would be very surprised if people with a different view of the present don't take issue with my view of the past. I just hope that people deal with the content of the film. None of the critics engaged with the real issues of Hidden Agenda." He describes the War of Independence as "an absolutely critical period", which is why he chose to deal with it in his new film. "When the struggle for independence came to a head, all sorts of possibilities were open," he says. "However, the British, being long-experienced imperialists, did their best to close them down. There are parallels with what's happening in parts of the world today."
His film will deal with "the human drama, the heroism, and what people were willing to sacrifice, which seems extraordinary to us now". It continues Loach's collaboration with the Scottish lawyer-turned-screenwriter Paul Laverty, who has written five other of Loach's films.
"Ken and myself have talked for a long time about doing a story in Ireland," says Laverty, sitting in a classroom at Hamilton High School in Bandon as the crew sets up another room for filming the debate on the Treaty.
"There were so many fascinating possibilities. I thought it was interesting to look at what happened with the flying columns during the War of Independence. Tom Barry's experiences were very interesting, and Ernie O'Malley's books."
Laverty's mother came from Co Limerick, and his Scottish father was himself the son of an Irishman. "I remember as a child hearing stories about the flying columns. One of my grandfathers was involved, and I have a cousin whose grandfather lived longer and told stories about the Black and Tans."
HE SAYS HIS greatest challenge was to capture the complexity of all that was going on in those turbulent times. "I wanted it to be truthful to what happened, without having named individuals from the period in the story, so every single character in the film is fictional. It's not that we were trying to get away from what happened, but I felt this was a way of actually getting closer to what happened.
"I didn't want to put Tom Barry in it, for example, and then for people to say that he wouldn't have said such a thing at a particular time or he wouldn't have worn this collar or that tie. You can get crucified with pedantic material. But, while the characters are fictional, they're inspired by people I read or heard about in my research."
He saw it as essential to explore the diversity of opinion at the time. "There were so many voices that might not have all been together in one place, and so much confusion after the Treaty. People went different ways for all sorts of reasons - for ideological reasons, because of friends or family, because they were young and influenced by others, or because they couldn't take the war any more. We wanted to catch all that turmoil.
"It was a great joy to study the period, to read all about it and to talk to historians, particularly Donal O'Driscoll at the university here in Cork, and then to create these fictional characters informed by the debate that took place in many parts of Ireland. I also wanted to give a voice to the various people who make up this flying column in the film and who came from different classes - some were sons of well-to-do farmers, others were landless labourers, and some were artisans."
Outside on the school's football pitch, more than a dozen young actors are psyching themselves up for the Treaty debate, and the scene is like a flashback in time as they move around on the grass in their period costumes, designed by Eimer Ní Mhaoldomhnaigh. Some are in three-piece suits and ties, others wearing buttoned-up collarless shirts and jumpers, and their hair is oiled and slicked down.
Once again, Loach has mixed non-actors with professionals in his cast. "They are all good for each other," he says. "There's no guile about the inexperienced actors and that's a very good leveller. Everyone starts on the same level. There's no actors' talk. Some of the young lads are really exceptional and very mature, and that always makes it easier."
He was so concerned with authenticity that he chose Cork natives for all but a few roles in the film. He credits casting director Una Kearney for doing "all the legwork" - advertising locally to find the right actors. They underwent a week of boot camp before shooting started - having rough terrain training, learning how to use weapons and getting to know each other.
Finding locations for the film began many months earlier, explains the film's producer, Rebecca O'Brien, who has produced seven earlier Loach features. "When you haven't got a lot of money, you can't build a lot of sets, so you need really good locations," she says.
Bandon provided many sets for the movie - along with a base for meals and costume changes at the local rugby club - and the film also shot in Coolea, Ballyvourney and over the border in Killarney, Co Kerry. O'Brien's only significant disappointment was that the parish council refused the crew permission to film a sermon in the local church, but an alternative church was found 12 miles (19km) away in Timoleague.
Raising the budget was a complicated financial jigsaw. Even though the film is set and shot entirely in Ireland, it is officially an Irish-British-Spanish-German co-production, with funding from the Irish Film Board, the UK Film Council and a German fund, along with advance sales of the distribution rights to most countries in Europe.
THE PRODUCTION HAS attracted a great deal of interest and co-operation from the communities where it was shot. Last week, for example, the people of Bandon witnessed 100 British soldiers marching through their town. People in Dublin were more blasé, O'Brien recalls, when Loach filmed an abduction scene on O'Connell Bridge for Hidden Agenda. "Nobody batted an eyelid," she says, "apart from one woman who looked a bit startled." Violence, and all its horrific consequences, is a key theme in the new film.
"It doesn't equate all violence," Loach says. "Violence begets violence, and any film on a war situation cannot help dealing with it. We hope to not fall into the cliche where the bodies just become numbers."
Paul Laverty says he and Loach were acutely aware of how important it was not to romanticise violence. "I've lived in a country at war, in Nicaragua, and I know how horrific the reality of war is. If you're in an ambush, it's absolutely terrifying, or if you think a road is going to be mined, or if you talk to people who have been tortured or the parents of the disappeared. It's absolutely devastating. People can start off with tremendous idealism, but the actual effect of killing or being shot at has terrible effects on the human psyche.
"This is not a Hollywood movie, so I hope people can see the complexity and the hurt as well as a story true to the times. That's the intention."
The Wind That Shakes the Barley will be released next year. Ae Fond Kiss is available on video and DVD from Monday