Friday 12 December 2008

Land And Freedom (Ken Loach)


Land and Freedom is a 1995 film (alternative title: Tierra y Libertad) directed by Ken Loach and written by Jim Allen. The movie narrates the story of David Carr, an unemployed worker and member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, who decides to fight for the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. The movie won the FIPRESCI International Critics Prize and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at the Cannes Film Festival.


After being wounded and recovering in a hospital in Barcelona, he finally joins — in accordance with his original plan and against the opinion of Blanca — the government-backed International Brigades, and he witnesses first-hand the Stalinist propaganda and repression against POUM members and anarchists; he then returns to his old company, only to see them rounded up by a government unit requiring their surrender: in a brief clash Blanca is killed. After her funeral he returns to Great Britain with a red neckerchief full of Spanish earth.


Finally the film comes back to the present, and we see Carr's funeral, in which his granddaughter throws the Spanish earth into his grave after speaking lines from "The Day Is Coming" a poem by William Morris. Afterwards she and the other family members perform a raised fist salute, honouring his beliefs and suggesting that his family might also hold them

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