28/09/23
The Cameo, Edinburgh
It feels like the end of an era. The Old Oak is the fourteenth feature film directed by Ken Loach and written by Paul Laverty. Their partnership began with Carla’s Song in 1986 but Loach, of course, has been around a lot longer than that (he directed his first feature, Poor Cow in 1967!). Now in his eighties, he’s decreed that this film will be his swan song.
From the opening scenes, we know we’re watching a Ken Loach film. All the familiar tropes are there: a cast of largely non-professional actors; the everyday struggles of working-class characters; the indifference of the powers that be; utterly realistic settings – and a socialist polemic that demonstrates how completely the people of Britain have been betrayed since the rise of Margaret Thatcher.
This story is set in a village just outside of Durham, a once vibrant community ravaged by the closing of the coal mines and now a crumbling vestige of its former self. When Syrian refugees are unceremoniously unloaded into the villages’s vacant properties, it’s hardly surprising that some of the people who’ve lived here all their lives react with suspicion and sometimes outright hostility to their new neighbours. Resources are already in short supply; there’s nothing left to share.
TJ Ballantyne (Dave Turner) is the landlord of the titular pub, which is now the one place where the local community can congregate, but even that is a shadow of what it once was. In a closed-down back room, photographs from the days of the miners’ strike, taken by TJ’s late father, decorate the walls. He shows them to Yara (Ebla Mari), a young Syrian woman, who is herself a keen amateur photographer. Her precious camera was broken by a local yob when she was stepping off the bus that brought her here and TJ helps her to get it repaired.
And when she comes up with the idea of reopening that back room and using it as a community space to offer free meals to everyone that needs one, TJ steps up to the challenge. But he has underestimated the jealousy and anger this will trigger from his neighbours…
While The Old Oak may not be Loach and Laverty’s finest achievement, these two cinema stalwarts have nonetheless created an entirely credible and sometimes heartbreaking story, one that serves as a fitting tribute to everything they’ve achieved over the years. It’s particularly satisfying to have Laverty himself onstage after the screening to answer questions about the film and the process of writing the screenplay.
If this really is to be a final collaboration, then The Old Oak provides a rousing sendoff. And I love the uncompromising way in which the film ends, with no pat solution to the problems – just a village slowly learning to become a community.
4.2 stars
Philip Caveney