A place to think deeply about movies
In this episode of the TIFF 2024 podcast season, Alex Heeney interviews legendary theatre director Marianne Elliott about her first feature film, The Salt Path, and the transition from stage to screen.
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In this episode of the podcast, Alex Heeney reviews and discuses the British independent film The Old Man and the Land, which stars Rory Kinnear and Emily Beecham.
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In this episode of the TIFF 2024 podcast season, Alex Heeney discusses two Ralph Fiennes films: Edward Berger’s Conclave and Uberto Pasolini’s The Return.
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In this episode of the TIFF 2024 podcast, Alex discusses two new works from British social realist filmmakers Andrea Arnold and Mike Leigh: Bird and Hard Truths.
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Alex Heeney reviews Ken Loach’s film The Old Oak, a warm, heartbreaking film that may not reach the highs of Loach’s best work, but it still energizes you to leave the cinema and make the world a better place.
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Notwithstanding Ken Loach’s previous film, the tragic masterpiece Sorry We Missed You, few filmmakers have the ability to talk about difficult social injustices with enough humanity that you leave feeling hopeful even if the latest battle wasn’t won. A former Labour Party member, his films have often been about the Solidarity movement amongst British union workers and working-class people. The Old Oak is a warm, heartbreaking film that may not reach the highs of Loach’s best work, but still leaves you energized to leave the cinema and make the world a better place.
Thirty years ago, in Land and Freedom (1995), he drew a direct line between the British Labour movement and solidarity with the republic in the Spanish Civil War, in a story about a young man who heads to fight for freedom in Spain, armed with nothing but ideals. That war was lost, but even that film is a call to arms (much like Mike Leigh’s version, Peterloo) to do what you can to stand in solidarity with others. Land and Freedom would have won the Palme d’Or that year if it were up to me.
In The Old Oak, a former British mining town, now rife with poverty and unemployment in a post-Brexit world, struggles to cope with a deluge of Syrian immigrants whom they see as a threat to their barely remaining privileges as the old white working class guard. TJ (Dave Turner) owns the last remaining public gathering space in town, the dilapidated pub The Old Oak, where locals gather to spout xenophobia and drown their sorrows. After a chance encounter with a young Syrian photographer, Yara (Ebla Mari) whose camera was unceremoniously smashed as soon as she arrived in town, TJ must decide whether turning the other cheek to keep his business alive is worth hurting the newcomers in town.
When the local charity that’s been distributing clothes and food to the newly arrived refugees gets the idea to hold community meals, The Old Oak is the natural setting for it. As TJ recalls, during the mining strikes, it was also a gathering place to show solidarity by sharing meals. Isn’t welcoming immigrants who have even less than the poor townspeople a logical extension of that? The only problem is that the meeting space they want to use is no longer insured and is full of barely-contained hazards.
The film is schematic enough that you can probably fill in the plot details of what will happen, how tragedy will strike, and how, nevertheless, once solidarity is formed, it’s a strong thing. I don’t mean that as a snub on the film; Paul Laverty’s blunt force political scripts tend to be effective when mixed with Ken Loach’s humanism. In the end, though, the film is about quiet moments shared between people who see each other as being at loggerheads, and those that lend a helping hand when they have nothing to lend at all. The bond between TJ and Yara is lovely and helps them both get through tough times, for a while anyway.
If The Old Oak is, as Loach has been threatening, really Loach’s final film, it will be a strong summation of his work: a film about community and solidarity in places you wouldn’t expect from people who can barely care for themselves. Like I, Daniel Blake, it often falls into the tropes of trying so hard to remind us that the Syrians are the Deserving Poor, rather than deserving of human rights regardless of their character. But it’s a warm film about good people doing their best to make a harsh world a little better, often at a great personal cost, and even when it’s not sustainable. Every little bit helps. But I hope we’ll get more from Loach, one of Britain’s best and most essential filmmakers.
More Ken Loach: Read our review of I, Daniel Blake. Listen to our podcast on Sorry We Missed You and Peterloo. Listen to our forthcoming podcast on abortion in British New Wave films, featuring Ken Loach’s Up the Junction.
Thea Sharrock’s Wicked Little Letters is the kind of film you can enjoy with your mum and immediately forget about afterward.
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A light, comedic early twentieth-century period piece based on a true story about women using wicked little words, Wicked Little Letters is the kind of film you can enjoy with your mum and immediately forget about afterward. Edith (Olivia Colman) and Rose (Jessie Buckley) play neighbours who like each other but don’t quite get along. Rose is forthright and potty-mouthed; Edith is a seemingly buttoned-up old maid. When Edith starts receiving anonymous letters full of dirty (read: wicked) words, folks assume Edith must be responsible. Trouble starts brewing. Edith, a straightforward single mother with much to lose from a jail sentence, denies any part in it. She reasons that she wouldn’t put something in a letter that she could say out loud. But then, who could it be? You’ve probably already figured it out.
There’s nothing particularly new or surprising here. Buckley has made a career out of playing feisty young women (think her other Rose, Wild Rose). Colman has already played an older version of a Buckley character in The Lost Daughter. It’s no surprise that their characters here have a lot in common — nor that Edith curses like a sailor. Everyone is as good as they need to be for a film that never takes any risks. There’s enjoyable supporting work from a dour Timothy Spall, Gemma Jones and Eileen Atkins as town busybodies, plus Hugh Skinner. Fresh from her Olivier Win for Streetcar, Anjana Vasan also gets a great showcase as the sleuthing Lady Police Officer.
Director Thea Sharrock began her career getting Harry Potter naked with a horse on the West End (Equus, 2007). She quickly showed much promise as a Shakespeare director on stage (As You Like It at The Globe in 2010) and on screen (The Hollow Crown: Henry V, where she whipped Tom Hiddleston into verse-speaking shape in 2012). Whether from lack of other opportunities or deliberate choice, she has since, like her latest film, taken a path of risk-free blandness.
Wicked Little Letters is a step up from her career nadir, the ableist romance Me Before You (2016). But with a Disney film in production and a new Bill Nighy Netflix film about solving homelessness with soccer, Wicked may be as edgy as she’s now willing to get.
More Thea Sharrock: Read our review of Sharrock’s TV film Henry V, starring Tom Hiddleston as King Henry. Listen to our 21st Folio podcast on Sharrock’s Henry V, where we compare it to Branagh’s film adaptation.
More Jessie Buckley: Read about why Jessie Buckley in Beast was one of the best emerging performers at Sundance 2018. Catch Buckley in Misbehaviour and The Lost Daughter.
More delightful British period pieces: We highly recommend Pride, The Lady in the Van, and One Life.