The Old Oak – Film Review
by Hugh Maguire

Director – Ken Loach
Writer – Paul Laverty
Stars – Lorenzo McGovern Zaini, Debbie Honeywood, Trevor Fox

As part of the Fragments Festival – 3rd edition of Genesis Cinema’s Fragments Festival – Celebrating Inclusivity through FIlm. – Sept 28th – Oct 1st

Well at the outset it’s not Barbie (2023) and we can be assured that it’s ‘grim up North’.  Indeed, if it were anything else we would be upset  Friends might ask did you enjoy it but that is to miss the point of a Ken Loach film.  The viewer might enjoy after a fashion but the films are not meant to be enjoyable – a cry from the heart, an appeal to our common humanity, an exaggerated rant with shades of Jeremy Corbyn?  It all depends on one’s point of view and political disposition.

Hated, it seems by many, and yet lauded by others, Loach is not a director who leaves you without an opinion  In The Old Oak, the name of the only pub remaining in a former mining village, all life is present – despair, cruelty, jealousy., but also love and hope.  With no overt religious overtones, the film has nonetheless a religious-like sentiment where all humanity can be reconciled and should live together in support of each other, regardless of colour and creed.  Easier said than done in the real world.  The mines have closed and the once thriving community, as with the neighbouring towns and villages, is in a state of terminal decline.  There is limited employment and little hope.  There is no infrastructure, even the church halls have closed.  Property prices have collapsed and the Conservative government agenda of levelling up seems nowhere on the horizon.  The only southern and London link is when capital-based agencies ship the homeless and refugees up to these villages, with little regard to how they will survive or fit in.  Into this already hard-pressed gritty community arrives a busload of Syrian refugees; the year is 2016.  This is the background for the overwhelming BREXIT vote from the region – a collective cry of despair.  Strangely there is no reference to BREXIT at any point in the film.  The arrival of the refugees triggers a wave of resentment, overt racism, and bigotry.   These locals are bitter and hostile and the newcomers – different, foreign and not speaking English are a threat, and become the target of all the pent-up bitterness.  So this is no Last of the Summer Wine and while inevitably sympathetic to the locals, Loach is able to show them at their most obnoxious too.

The pub, The Old Oak, becomes the focus of the community.  Through the coming together around food and shared meals there are depths of warmth and unity across the communities.  The pub brings out the common humanity.  The women throughout are notably more resourceful and welcoming, so that is another point Loach is making.  As in many of his films, he makes use of untrained actors.  Remarkably there is only one trained actor in the whole film.  The lead actor, the wonderful Dave Turner, as the hard-pressed and despairing pub landlord, is masterful.  Turner spent thirty years of his life as a fireman.  He is supported by a cast of locals, many of whom are clearly gifted actors and convey their emotions and lines with complete conviction.   On the other hand, when there are some unlikely long polemical speeches, the acting can appear a bit wooden – ‘I am not an actor but I am delivering a learned discourse on economic policy’.   This can jar a little but on the other hand can be ignored if one concentrates on the very considerable achievement and the underlying message of hope in the face of despair, which is Loach’s legacy in this, his final film.