British octogenarian Ken Loach, whose recent films set in northeastern England have earned him renewed respect as the chronicler of his country’s social malaise, once more heads north with his regular screenwriter Paul Laverty to reveal the dire economic conditions of England’s working class in The Old Oak. The story, a low-level conflict between two disinherited groups forced to live together, is set in County Durham where, until recently, mining was the main form of livelihood. Now the village is so poor it’s barely able to support a single pub. These morose portraits of angry, defeated sons of miners convey a sense of their current plight better than any documentary. And yet, this is the least absorbing of Loach’s three last films, both because of its milder, less urgent approach to the low-key drama and the difficulty the viewer has getting close to the community of foreigners who come to live in the town.
The Old Oak – the name of the last pub standing – comes after two very hard acts to follow: ‘I, Daniel Blake’ (2016) about a man fighting to keep his welfare benefits after a heart attack, which won the Palme d’Or in Cannes, and ‘Sorry We Missed You’ (2019), a heart-breaker about a poor man who buys a van to do rush-order delivery work. It’s safe to say that anyone who has seen these films will not easily forget what it’s like to struggle on the bottom rungs of the social ladder.
The new film, unfortunately, seems to stop half-way, capturing the vividness of life on the English side, but not that of its band of outsiders. While D.P. Robbie Ryan’s lens remains sharply focused on the depressed pub owner TJ Ballantyne (played with measured perfection by non-pro actor Dave Turner, who has appeared in other Loach films) and the cruel quartet of drinking customers who oppose the resettlement of have-not Syrian families to their already impoverished village, the impression Loach gives us of the Syrians remains disappointingly blurred and generic. Language is a particular problem, keeping the Arabic speakers at a distance and hard to penetrate and individualize.
Even the protagonist who comes to the fore, the young woman photographer Yara (Elba Mari), is idealized as a generous, mature, asexual heroine without a past, whose command of English (learned in a refugee camp in two months) is ridiculously good. It is not surprising that “the Syrians”, as the locals call them, come off as a block of uninteresting folks whose main narrative role is to rile up the racists in the village, until the last scenes when human empathy and solidarity spontaneously, though not very credibly, prevail.
On the plus side of the ledger, the villagers’ gradual change of heart towards the newcomers and the possibility of accepting them into their community are expertly incorporated into scenes that are deeply moving. Loach remains one of the few major filmmakers who really cares about social issues of this type and can conjure emotional moments out of scenes of solidarity. This sort of payback should assure wide distribution of the Goodfellas release to Loach fans worldwide.
The tension begins with the very first shots, as dazed-looking Syrian refugees get off a chartered bus in an English town they have never seen before. They are assisted by the capable professional volunteer Laura (Claire Rodgerson) and by TJ Ballantyne, owner of the local pub, while they are heckled by a group of young men with words that are anything but welcoming. In the confusion, one of the hecklers snatches a camera from Yara’s bag and breaks it.
Laura and TJ nervously get the families into the various narrow row houses where they have been assigned to live. Later in the pub, local homeowner Charlie (Trevor Fox) will complain to like-minded pals “there goes the neighborhood”: the immigrants have brought the value of their homes down to a fifth of their former price. Actually, there seems to be no way to verify this, since it’s based on the acquisition at auction of a group of houses by a company in Cyprus that has never laid eyes on them.
In any case Charlie, an old friend of TJ’s, is not the most racist of his drinking buddies, and he makes a few poignant points about how the authorities always put the foreigners in villages that already have nothing, but where they have to share – never in posh places in London. Now he fears that he and his sick wife will never be able to move to a better place. His friends are much more hostile and eventually they instigate a cowardly little drama in the pub that puts an end to free lunches for poor kids, whether locals or newcomers. One can see that TJ is being forced to take a stand pro or con regarding the refugees, but it’s a foregone conclusion who he’ll side with, given that he’s been helping them all along.
As usual, tech credits are simple but effective, beginning with Ryan’s extremely natural-looking camerawork and the raw, unmade-up look of the actors. The dilapidated pub looks like a sad remnant of its former self, a living illustration of what happens when there’s no money for repairs or insurance.
Director: Ken Loach
Screenplay: Paul Laverty
Cast: Dave Turner, Ebla Mari, Claire Rodgerson, Trevor Fox, Chris McGlade, Col Tait, Jordan Louis
Producer: Rebecca O’Brien
Cinematography: Robbie Ryan
Editing: Jonathan Morris
Production design: Fergus Clegg
Costume design: Joanne Slater
Music: George Fenton
Sound recordist: Ray Beckett
Sound editor: Kevin Brazier
Production companies: Sixteen Films, Why Not Productions, Goodfellas, BFI, BBC Film, Les Films du Fleuve
World Sales: Goodfellas
Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Competition)
In English, Arabic
113 minutes
