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''Land and Freedom'' is a 1995 Film 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 Cannes Ecumenical Jury Prize. SYNOPSIS The film's narrative unfolds in a long Flashback . David Carr has died at an old age and his granddaughter discovers old letters, newspapers and other documents in his room: what we see in the film is what she imagines. Persuaded of the necessity of helping the Spanish Republicans in their fight against the Fascist Nationalist insurgence, Carr, a young unemployed worker and member of the Communist Party, leaves Liverpool and travels to Spain to join the International Brigade s. He crosses the Catalan border and casually ends up enlisted in a POUM Militia commanded by Lawrence, in the Aragon front. In this company, as in all POUM militias, men and women — such as the young and enthusiastic Maite — fight together. In the following weeks and months he becomes friends with other foreign volunteers, like the French Bernard, and he falls in love with Blanca, a member of POUM, who is also the Ideologue of his group. After being wounded and healing in a hospital in 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 a poem by William Morris . STARRING
THEMES According to Ken Loach, the most important scene of the film is the debate in an Assembly of a village successfully liberated by the militia. People from the actual village where the film was shot play peasant parts in the movie and express their thoughts freely (despite language difficulties), and a debate ensues about whether or not to Collectivise the village land and that of the recently shot priest. An American with the POUM militia argues that the war effort must come first, suggesting that collectivisation and other revolutionary actions might hamper that effort. He mentions that if such actions and the slogans accompanying them continue, they will not gain the support of the liberal democracies such as the United States and Britain ("You're scaring them," he says). The necessity of a contemporaneous war and revolution is expressed by a German militiaman, who says that 'in Germany revolution was postponed and now Hitler is in power'. In the end the villagers vote for collectivisation, thereby taking steps on a revolutionary path. In the anarchist-controlled areas this kind of expropriation of land was common, as the civil war was accompanied by a Social Revolution . As in the above scene, both Spanish and English are spoken throughout the film, and subtitles are used selectively. Carr arrives in Spain without knowing any Spanish, but gradually picks it up — and luckily for him English is the '' Lingua Franca '' in his militia. The social revolution was opposed by both the Soviet -supported communists and the democratic republicans and as the war progressed, the government and the communists were able to leverage their access to Soviet arms to restore government control over the war effort, both through diplomacy and force. An historical event, the bloody fight between Republicans and Anarchists for controlling the Telefónica building in Barcelona, has been chosen by Loach as an emblem of this internal conflict (See Barcelona May Days ). Carr's progressive disenchantment starts from this meaningless fight, which he fails to understand because both groups were supposed to be on the same side. At one point he is guarding the Communist Party headquarters in Barcelona and engages in banter across the barricades with the anarchists opposite. He asks a Mancunian among them "Why aren't you over here with us?" In reply his compatriot asks him the same question and Carr answers "I don't know". Another important moment inspired by actual events is the execution of a village . Most critics and viewers noted the similarity between the story narrated in this film and George Orwell 's book '' Homage To Catalonia '', in which the author wrote one of the more famous accounts of the war, that of his own experience as a volunteer in POUM militia before the POUM's suppression by the increasingly powerful Communist Party. EXTERNAL LINKS
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