This review contains plot information including the ending.

Loach himself, in an interview, suggested that this is likely to be his final film. Loach, now turned 87, is another senior citizen film-maker in Europe still able to present quality film-making for discriminating audiences. As so often has been the case a production by Britain’s finest contemporary director relies on support from the Europe that we exited a few years back; Production companies on the film include UK’s Sixteen Films, Studio Canal UK and BBC Film, France’s Why Not Productions, and Belgium’s Les Films du Fleuve. It benefits from the contributions of Loach’s regular collaborators: Paul Laverty as Scriptwriter: Rebecca O’Brien as Producer: Production Designer Fergus Clegg who worked on The Wind That Shakes the Barley: Robbie Ryan, the cinematographer who worked on I, Daniel Blake: Jonathan Morris who edited several films starting with Hidden Agenda: and George Fenton’s music which has accompanied films since Land and Freedom. Whilst this is a moment for regret this is also an occasion to pay tribute to a group of film-makers who have combined excellence in form and technique with progressive content; uncommon in the British film industry.

The Old Oak of the title is a run-down public house in a run-down ex-mining community in the North East, in County Durham. The village has boarded up houses: closed shops: and an almost total absence of any state provision, by councils, state agencies and central government. The local population is alienated: often angry and resentful: and likely to blame a visible target rather than the absent political establishments. What is clearly absent is an actual community which we learn once thrived.

The film opens with a series of black and white photographs accompanied by a soundtrack of the events so recorded. This is the arrival of Syrian refugees who have been allocated a disused property, presumably by the local council. They are accompanied by Laura (Claire Rogerson), who is some sort of charity worker; and by ‘TJ’ Ballantyne (Dave Turner), who drives the van to transport the family but who is also some kind of local activist and who runs the Public House, The Old Oak. The other residents in the street are antagonistic, some just resentful, some openly racist.

The key member of the Syrian family is Yara (Ebla Mari). She speaks English, which she taught herself in a refugee camp in the Middle East. Her most treasured possession is a digital 35mm camera given to her by her father, now imprisoned in Syria. The camera is damaged in an altercation. Later, TJ helps her to have the camera repaired. This is a key sequence in the drama. Yara visits TJ’s pub; he shows her a disused and locked room where he has some old analogue cameras that belonged to his father. On the wall are black and white photographs taken by his father during the miner’s strike in 1984 / 1985. TJ tells her how this very room was used for communal meals for the miners, their families and their supporters. Here, as a motif that recurs throughout the drama, we have one of the key events in the class struggle in Britain in the later last century. It is worth noting that one of Loach’s earlier films, banned by Channel 4, was a documentary filmed during the strike, Which Side Are You On, which includes such communal activities, poems, songs and actual strike footage.

Yara. with her camera, starts to photograph the locals and the locality. She developed her photographic skills whilst recording daily life in the refugee camp. Relationships start to develop between the Syrian family and local people; whilst at the same time a faction in the village remain resentful and antagonistic. The now friendly locals and Syrians come together for a screening of Yara’s photographs accompanied by what seems to be a Syrian Oud. The sequence cuts between the projected black and white photographs and the enraptured audience members.  The sequence reminded me powerfully of the wonderful short Cuban film, Por Primera Vez / For The First Time (1967). Picked out are characters whose experiences are common to both the local working class families and the Syrian refugee families, The common experiences are both of exploitation and oppression.

The presentation uses the disused room at the pub. This becomes a bone of contention in the communities. A group of regulars at the pub wanted to use the room for a public meeting to raise concerns regarding the arrival of the refugees. TJ used his lack of insurance cover to decline. However, after a particular trauma and support from the Syrian family he agrees to renovate the room so it can be used for community meals several times a week. These are free and supported by local donations and by support from charities. One of the latter involves TJ and Yara visiting Durham Cathedral.  But the room is sabotaged by disgruntled locals. The event is followed by an evening in the public bar which is more crowded than before, suggesting there is an amount of support for opposition to the Syrian refugees and the communal meals.

There seems no way back for this community activity. However, news then comes that Yara’s father has died or been killed in a Syrian prison. Sympathetic locals gather at their house with flowers, gifts and expressions of sympathy; the familiar sight of a wall with flowers and gifts which has become a common sign in contemporary Britain. Yara lays her camera among the flowers; this seems both a tribute to her father but also an icon, as the camera is the tool with which she, in particular, has engaged with the indigenous community. Even one of the suspected perpetrators of the sabotage turns up with his family. The final sequence of the drama shows members of the village community attending the Durham Miners’ Gala, returning us to a central motif of the narrative. The closing credits roll up the screen as we watch the crowds at one of most evocative celebrations of Britain’s working class.

Like the majority of Loach’s film work this is a melodrama of protest. And, as previously, the drama ends not with victory; rather a defeat but with the protagonists committed to continue the struggle. There are strong parallels with an earlier film, Jimmy’s Hall. These include a return, actual in the Irish film, here metaphorical: the import of a prior historical action which failed but left a legacy: the impact of a foreign culture, in the Irish film carried by a local, in this film bought by the refugees: a community space which has been closed down and is reopened: the development of a reborn community despite the restrictions placed upon them: the final failure of the community faced with the destruction of the community space. The differences are also important: the Durham village community is fractured within: the contradictions of this sabotage the community whereas in the Irish film it is the agencies of church and capital that engender sabotage: and whilst the Irish film presents these oppressive and exploitative agencies in the Durham film these are absent, only present in references in the dialogue.

But both films enjoy fine production values and the distinctive style recognisable throughout Loach’s career. Laverty’s script privileges community, something that is central to all the writing he has provided for Loach productions. As always we have a predominantly non-professional cast, including people from the region and from the homeland of the refugees. They all convince whether it is part of the sympathetic portrayals or of characters who in some way subverts the sense of community. Loach’s distinctive trope of a three legged dog appears in a black and white photograph. There is also a darker canine sequence, so be advised.

This drama was filmed on Kodak Motion Picture film in the North East; in several villages including one with a disused public house standing in for The Old Oak. Unfortunately no 35mm prints appear to be available for exhibitors, only digital transfers. It is in colour, with the black and white sequences, and in standard wide screen.

One word that has appeared in reviews is sentimental: predictably The Telegraph used the term ‘rant’, something I recognised from earlier posts. In terms of the first term Loach’s film have always included strong sentiment and at times this has tipped over into sentimentality. In the television works, and in many of the movies, the gritty nature of the drama and the characters has contained the sentiment. But to a degree sentiment [among other qualities] has been inevitable because Loach and his colleagues have opted for a mainstream audience and therefore the conventions of mainstream film and television. This has been limited both by the style of films, especially in the use of a slower shot ratio: a very naturalistic style of performance: and a reliance on actual settings, locations and props. In the case of this movie I did find that at times, especially early on, I was conscious of the construction of the narrative, something I am not usually aware of, at least during the running of the film. There were several points where I was pretty sure of what was to follow; something I usually experience with mainstream movies.

The Old Oak parallels sequences in Raining Stones (1993) and I, Daniel Blake. Less common for a Loach project Raining Stones addresses conflicts which are within the working class whilst I. Daniel Blake has a limited address of either the state or capital. In this film it is partly explained by the central focus on community. And the script does make one aware of the external forces that have produced the alienation that besets the village at the beginning and which returns to sabotage that reborn community. In particular at several points we see people accessing social media and in the main this is a negative force. Clearly the film suggests an atomized community, typical not just of the North East but of British culture in general. However, I feel that the such a drama needs a more explicit address of the causes of exploitation and oppression. It is worth noting that it is not clear in the film who or what has decided to allocate the refugees the disused house. And Laura appears to be a charity worker, but her role or organisation is not made clear. Equally TJ constantly refers to the problems of a run-down public house and inadequate resources; I assumed that it was not a tied public house but even this was not clear. He also uses the word ‘betrayal’ in regard to the sabotage.

This is a limitation of Loach’s work over the years; the centrality of betrayal as a function in the narrative. Betrayal by union leadership was a factor in the early television works dramatising trade union action: it became central in the BBC series Days of Hope, especially in the episode addressing the General Strike of 1926: and it was also central in the hard-to-see documentary Questions of Leadership (1983). It was certainly there in the two dramas addressing modern revolutions: in Land and Freedom and The Wind That Shakes the Barley. In The Old Oak it is local indigenous characters who sabotage the community room. But the alienation that fuels their resentment, and even racism, is only addressed indirectly. In many Ken Loach films the representations of State and Capital work to see such betrayals in a context. This is true of Jimmy’s Hall: it was true of one of my favourite films, Riff-Raff: and it was true of The Navigators (2001).

There is no doubt that betrayal has figured in the histories of the working classes. But it is never a sufficient explanation or factor. Both Lenin and Trotsky were clear that the power of capital and its states would be only overcome by an international revolution or series of revolutions. And the Marxist tradition, including the contributions of these two figures, has been weaker in Britain than elsewhere in much of Europe.

An established ways to circumvent mainstream conventions is in the use of reflexivity; drawing attention to the construction of the film itself. A fine exponent of this form was the now sadly lost contemporary film-maker of Ken Loach, Pewter Watkins. Even more than Loach, his career depended on the support from abroad. His La Commune (Paris, 1871) worked to recreate a melodrama of protest on the historic Paris Commune, but full of direct references to the source of exploitation and repression. Both Loach and Watkins clearly made didactic movies, Watkins emphatically so. And Britain, more than its European counterparts, has a film culture antithetical to the didactic. It has always struck me how many critics rate Kes (1969) as their favourite Loach film; one that is less didactic than many. It is instructive that Watkins has not even managed to achieve the exposure or praise in Britain that Loach and his team have managed.

In fact, The Old Oak does include a degree of reflexivity. The opening sequence, with its black and white photographs in asynchronous pairing with the soundtrack, is clearly reflexive. And there are following moments in the film where visual and aural presentation makes such effects. The ending, combining the performers of the film and the actual people celebrating at the Durham Gala, emphasises how this fictional drama relates to the actual history of the people and the place.

The Old Oak is also an example of an increasing tendency in Loach films, that it that they are sited in areas that are, in economic and cultural terms, on the periphery of the British State. We have had films set in Scotland and now a series set in the North East of England. This would seem to be that a focus on the traditional working class is best represented in these regions. And Ken Loach’s politics are very much related to the traditional working class and the Marxist emphasis on the proletariat as the vanguard for revolution. It would also seem that Loach, wisely in one sense, adheres to the culture and politics with which he is familiar. It does mean that there are not major works in which the representation of the new working classes, in particular Afro-Caribbean communities, are central. Such characters are there and well represented but not central in a way that women, as opposed to the male worker, are central. One can make the same point about film-makers from different class or ethnic formations. This discourse reflects the divisions and separations that bedevil working people and their communities in Britain. However, it eases the task of repressing dissent and resistance for the ruling class. One key example of addressing these issue is Horace Ové’s fine Playing Away, cleverly set round a cricket match. Sadly Ové died recently; another film-maker who never enjoyed the access to screens that he deserved.

However, these limitations should not detract from what Loach and his colleagues have achieved in a series of films that address a Britain in which class rule, inequality and reactionary values, propagated by state and media, are dominant. I was for the most part completely involved in this movie and I was moved by the climax and resolution. It is likely that even Ken Loach could not imagine that audiences, including myself, would view the film as the brutal war on another set of refugees close to those from Syria would be inflicted at this time. So, I think it is proper to also praise Ken Loach’s solidarity with the Palestinian people. For his pains he has recently suffered a revival of the slander, made by zionists and fellow-travellers, on the supposedly impartial BBC. See The Jewish Voice for Labour.