Old Oak: film review

Yesterday I watched Old Oak, the new film by Ken Loach. Set in the north-east of England, in a run-down ex-mining village on the coast, it starts with the arrival of a family of refugees from Syria. Immediately, tensions flare, centring around the pub, the last public space still open, where a group of regulars espousing racist views conflict with the pub landlord, a kindly man who believes in helping the community.

The poverty of the indigenous people is manifest. The terraces of run-down houses are being sold at auction for £8,000 each and one of the locals who bought his house for £40,000 and wants to leave can no longer sell his only asset. Children are being brought up in houses where the cupboards and fridges are bare. So charity dispensed to the refugees is fiercely disputed.

A plan is hatched to bring the community together by using the back room of the pub to serve free lunches to those in need. I was afraid for a moment that the film would fizzle out into a simplistic fable of ‘if we all pull together we’ll stick together’. But Ken Loach is too canny for that. There are challenges ahead and we, the audience, by now fully invested in what happens to the landlord of the pub, are in for an emotional roller coaster of triumph and despair.

I won’t say what happens in the end except that I was glad the cinema was dark because I was crying.

There were only two moments where, for me, the script flagged slightly. In Durham cathedral the main Syrian character was given a long speech, almost at the end the landlord was given a long speech. Both of these disrupted the flow of the action and sounded a bit preachy (his sounded better because he was less articulate, repeating himself - was he ad libbing? - and was trying to express emotions rather than philosophy). Otherwise I was always fully involved in what was happening on screen.

This was one of those films that, on the face of it, are slow, with little action, but where a dominant plot is sacrificed to an intense and accurate observation of human beings. The ‘frustrated defiance’ body-language of the lad beaten up at school was pitch perfect. One of the strengths was the non-judgmental understanding and compassion shown for the villains: one could feel their suffering, their disillusion, their hopelessness. The landlord’s best friend was trying so hard to keep his head above water (there was a picture behind his front door which provided mute but eloquent testimony to his need to keep up appearances) and you could feel his quiet desperation as he struggled.

This film is a triumph which proves that you don’t need special effects of endless action to make quality cinema.

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God