Ken Loach S/D

Too much rolling Irish hills 'n' fog, but, still, a near-great film. I can't fathom how some commentors on websites have actually called this "unobjective"!

Armond White is quite wrong.

I saw it for the first time the other day, and thought it was very good. But Kes is my favourite film evah.

big box set coming soon, apparently

"I can't fathom how some commentors on websites have actually called this "unobjective"!"

So you think it's objective?!?! I don't know the history, but at least from the early going (I'm only half through) it definitely seems to have a slant to it (it's def good so far btw.)

...by which I mean, "totally sold on the IRA cause," which it clearly is not.

Gotchya. Armond White continues to be an idiot.

Naughty naughty Clint Eastwood for being a "capitalist"!

armond is bewilderingly wrong, but in confusing ways.

loach's films are all staggeringly loaded melodramas, which isn't a bad thing always, but he's attached to post-war notions of realism -- in acting and in avoidance of close-ups, montage, etc -- that are unnecessarily limiting.

of course he's polemical, that's the point. you couldn't make a 100-minute film about The Troubles and not be; there's too much historical data you just can't get across.

loach is not the great influence people talk about, anyway: alan clarke is. i think 'bloody sunday' was clearly in the line of clarke's n. ireland film 'contact'.

OK, so "It's a Free World". Didn't like it. Clunky, bolted together, as usual. Realism that isn't actually remotely realistic. Reminds me of why I generally avoid Ken Loach films - esp. the more explicitly political ones.

bummed out that i missed this

I thought it was fantastic, despite the contrivances (necessary to make a coherent drama?). I have missed the last few Loach films, so I thought it was quite novel and effective that it was shown from the side of the baddy, who was a really stomach-churning baddy. Admittedly I have no way of knowing whether the realism was realistic or not, but it certainly did not detract from my gripped-ness.

In fact, I was so impressed I went out and bought "As Long As The Wind That Shakes The Barley Is Mine" from Sainsbury's.

"As Long As The Wind That Shakes The Barley Is Mine"

Shit film. End of.

I thought it was fantastic, despite the contrivances (necessary to make a coherent drama?).

Not necessary, just clumsy

"As Long As The Wind That Shakes The Barley Is Mine"

Shit film. End of.

-- kv_nol, Thursday, September 27, 2007 12:12 PM

what did you dislike about it? i thought it was brilliant.

Basically (please to note: I am Irish) I found it pathetic mea culpa posturing by Loach on behalf of England.

So exactly what you'd expect then

Didn't make it any less shit though.

Search: Kes
Destroy: Everything else.

lol at Loach "posturing" "on behalf" of England.

Why not, he seems pretty patriotic to me

Don't worry Tom, that's just Alfred's way.

Compared to Get On The Bus, It's A Free World is a masterpiece of subtlety.

I mean, you're right about it being clumsy at times, but I thought it was very effective, and I'm still thinking about it, and perhaps most impressively, I didn't fall asleep.

feminism: the soft option

High praise indeed! (xpost)

land and freedom is fantastic, like a really good john sayles movie

i once made the unfortunate accident of renting 'ladybird ladybird' and watching it with the folks at xmas. quite liked 'the wind that shakes the barley'

Really enjoyed 'Ae Fond Kiss', for what it's worth.

jaysus the edge is 'barley' bad. not on a political level -- tho it's a replay of 'land and freedom' (and 'the rank and file' and probably various others): socialist freedom is within grasp but the compromisers fuck it all up: i don't know how feasible this is in the instance of 1920s ireland, but the repetition of the exact same trope is telling -- but it's just embarrassingly primitive as storytelling.

it's a good subject for a nonfiction film because otherwise you have laughable exposition scenes -- as here when a british soldier briefly lets us know how damaged the black and tans were by WW1.

sayles is an interesting comparison: loach seems unable to create characters, as i think sayles can. could loach do something like 'the return of the seacaucus seven'?

anyone seen Hidden Agenda?

socialist freedom is within grasp but the compromisers fuck it all up:

this wasn't how i read this at all, movie seemed really circumspect about the uses of violence. the scene where the true believers argue with the IRA honcho to respect the provisional court paralleled nicely up against the scene where the same true believers reject the treaty -- "we are not merely a terrorist gang" becomes "we must remain a terrorist gang until the end". the stock "lesson" seemed to be that political violence requires an unstable fanaticism that doesn't stop.

i can't believe loach really thinks a socialist revolution was on the eve of happening, cos the movie doesn't seem that optimistic. the movie wanted to remind all us bourgie romantics that a) there were a lot of straight up commies in the early IRA, b) radical movements abuse the shit out of ppl too, c) ireland got rid of the brits kinda but heyo not church and class. but i don't know anything about loach, maybe this is unintentional. it's what i got from it.

i thought it was pretty great btw. ppl arguing politics in real time is cheap exposition but also totally awesome. i don't have a problem with hamfisted.

im probably reading ken loach's public persona into it, and you definitely saw a much better film than me.

im probably reading ken loach's public persona into it

which i think is legit coz i think the films express his viewpoint really (way too) clearly; but otoh this exchange of views says maybe not. hmmm...

yeah i liked it quite a lot even tho the bum notes are right out there immediately. the larger movements of history are sort of walked through by the characters forrest-gump style (blank, dispassionate, hand-held, semi-improv filmmaking disguises this), but in a sense i felt those larger movements falling away, and most of the film's attention is on what it takes to apply violence, how people talk about it before and after, what they think it costs, what it's worth.

like, i dunno if historically the nascent free state was as brutal as the british, so i dunno if having the house-search scenes bookend the film is justified. but as a demonstration of how there is a kind of inexorable gravity toward more death by a small (but always non-zero) number, i thought it was v powerful. i'm guessing loach wants me to see the tru IRA thug irridentists as heroes til the end but somehow what ended up on screen didn't say this.

The worst thing in Loach always = 'relationships', 'love' etc - a disaster area of cringe narrative

So presumably the Pinefox won't be anticipating Looking for Eric, starring Eric Cantona as himself.

some footballer eh? Opens in US in May.

a "bittersweet comedy about a postman whose downward-spiralling life is given a sudden boost of inspiration"

Not titled Looking for Eric H to See One of My Films

looks like he's putting his films on youtube

http://www.youtube.com/user/KenLoachFilms
http://www.youtube.com/show/kenloach

kind of tells you how much of a shit he gives about the medium he works in

so is looking for eric any good

will it be comprehensible to someone who doesnt know who eric cantona is

I didn't know who he was and was quite amused.

anyone seen The Angel's Share?

no. considering.

Yes - it's a good companion piece to The Kid With a Bike.

Probably the funniest Loach.

anyone seen /The Angel's Share/?

Clio Barnard's follow up to The Arbor, The Selfish Giant looks very promising and is picking up rave reviews. She has utilised local non-professional actors Loach style. I love that bit from the trailer, angry mum: "You have been excluded from school" "Sick!".

I worked on some of the most deprived estates in Bradford for 4 years and as someone who grew up on a council estate I was still shocked at the extreme poverty I saw; as in rooms that smell of raw ammonia, houses without furniture, carpets or bedding that children lived in, houses without any heating because tenants had ripped out their own heating system as scrap.

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/oct/24/the-selfish-giant-review

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tEgcpTbvJ8

Anyone who has seen Jimmy's Hall yet? It's not a good film, but it's pretty funny for a last film for a political filmmaker. A story about an old fighter returning one last time to fight the battle, does exactly the same thing he did before, and loses all over again. I'd read Jimmy Gralton as a standin for Loach himself, not because it's necessarily true, but because it makes it all bleakly funny. Older, but non the wiser. If only the filmmaking didn't trap it all up constantly, never ever selling what is going on as having any kind of significance whatsoever.

It's an interesting period in Irish history (mid 1930s) that's never really been covered in film before. I found it slightly average though, something lacking or too pandering to mainstream tastes which has hampered some of his later work. Jim Norton is excellent in this though.

Just watching The Price Of Coal tonight, it is so good and on youtube in it's entirety.

Thought revive would be Barry Hines related.

Has anyone seen the documentary about Carol White, The Battersea Bardot?

Also just found this song by a band I've never heard of:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhU3HoBNiqo

Which song and video are pretty good upon first listen. Can't say the same for another, different song I found with the same title.

Ah, the band is slightly misnamed on that video. Still hadn't heard of that, although now I can find mention in the archives.

Also, although this probably not the, um, thread for it, I recently watched the Barry Hines-scripted Threads on MUBI, which lived up to its reputation. “The night the country didn’t sleep" indeed. Perhaps one day will read my copy of A Kestrel for a Knave as well.

his Spirit of '45 doc was such enraging, execrable rose-tinted claptrap I didn't last long with it. I don't know if I was just in a grumpy mood, but it seemed unbearable at the the time.

I'm getting so pissed off my typing is stuttering

ran across this spirited attack

https://letterboxd.com/phk/film/sorry-we-missed-you/

His own political history – the Workers' Revolutionary Party, the Socialist Workers Party, George Galloway's RESPECT Coalition – is like a timeline of the most vacuous, posturing elements of Britain's bourgeois celebrity Left. Any real causes he may have aided can be chalked up to the stopped-clock principle.

lol ... totally otm!

A bit offside to have a go at his petite bourgeoisie roots, there is plenty enough to criticise about his movies or his predilection for crank left political wasters!

lol harsh but broadly fair, not a critique of his film-making tho so

i'd like to think about *why* most of the films are so unconvincing, such bad cinema. his politics are connected to that - they're missionary work, mostly, which accounts for some of the glaring duffness of tone, but i'd like to read a more complete account of their failures as movies, without running a rote "avant-garde vs realism" take. i mean yeah of course he's shit compared to Godard, but it'd be more interesting to think about why he's shit compared to say the Dardenne Bros

Some good points in that attack/rant. I for one found some of the absolutely shit 'acting' in "Sorry We Missed You" did more to ruin the film than the ott piling on of tragic events. "Kes" rules forever, though.

I'm not saying Brizé's The Measure of a Man (2015) is classic, but I did enjoy infinitely more than My Name Is Joe and as heavy handed as it is, it does touch on the theme that we are all bad and should all feel bad, not just the tories or dead eyed bureaucrats dishing out human misery, we are all a bunch of bastards!

I have read reviews where people Loach has coaxed some good performances from amateur actors. I always think the exact opposite, rather he has indoctrinated them into the ways of hack acting and it will take some work to undo that damage!

loved the last film

i feel like the point of using non-actors is not to have them "ACT"

tbf Alfred if i watch a whole new Loach film now it's by accident/against my will

The non-actress is the heart of the film, a bit like Chrissy Rock in Ladybird Ladybird.

The only non-actor who appeared in a Loach film that I can remember going on to have any k inf of acting career was, er... the guy who played Les Battersby in Coronation Street! I stand corrected if there are others.

... and kind, that is, not any k inf.

Martin Compston has had a very successful career.

Oh forgot him, better than Les Battersby for sure.

I enjoyed "I, Daniel Blake" despite myself. was the best of his 21st century films (that id seen) but still mawkish and hamfisted.

lol I meant I, Daniel Blake above not My Name Is Joe

my name is Joe at least has a bit of moral complexity

The 60s films and wednesdays plays were a total revelation to me when I saw them. Cathy Come Home, Up the Junction, Poor Cow. The didacticism of the kitchen-sink narrative sections are disrupted and often contradicted by the polyvocal audio documentary elements. They're good documents of postwar youth culture: music, dancing, teased hairstyles and leather jackets.

I tend to find the criticism of his films more tedious than anything I've come across in the films themselves: the purported bleakness feels humane and with more humour than critics let on, the purported hysteria and exaggeration disregards the scale of human cruelty in the real world and the insane baroquely nasty situations that people seem to be trapped in, day after day. There are certainly far more noxious figures in the british politico-media aristocracy and at the very least he's made a film world that is recognisable and means something. I'd definitely take him over Mike Leigh with his nastily misogynistic morality plays. I daniel blake was mawkish yeah but felt legitimate and urgent when 'austerity' had completely ossified into a journalistic bookmark with no referent. If he's as shit as people say he is, it really is a testament to what a cesspit the establishment press is.

Anyway, it always makes me laugh when broadsheet newspaper critics try having a go at films for being simplistic when you see the lists of shitty films that get acclaimed year after year.

Great posts, plax. I mostly agree but you've explained why I agree, which I wasn't quite sure of until I read it, tbh.

"If he's as shit as people say he is, it really is a testament to what a cesspit the establishment press is."

I don't really get this plax, are you trying to say I've been brainwashed into thinking he's shit? No probably not , but I still don't quite get it! I've come to this point after watching something close to a dozen of his post Cathy Come Home, Kes, The Price Of Coal era movies. And I wouldn't draw attention to the humour in his movies, it really isn't his strong point and usually is about as funny as a stale Chris Williamson fart. He hasn't put anything out in the last two decades even half as good as Leigh's Turner or Peterloo movies if you are pitting him against him. I'm not opposed to the idea of some lefty type director putting the spotlight on austerity, but he is a boring grinder, with no flair and no real anger tbh.

I feel like a bit of curmudgeon for having a go at him while an abject piece of garbage like nolan is so highly rated on here, but his movies just really fucking annoy me.

No question Leigh's the better director.

xp to calzino,

no i meant only that its possible the uniform airless rightwing 'discourse' that operates everywhere is potentially the only thing that makes his work consistently vital, as one of the few alternative voices that's been allowed to survive this long.

so many leigh films are completely marred for me by how obviously he seems to absolutely hate women. i haven't read much about him so I don't know if this is something that is commented on often but usually there's at least one absolute trainwreck pathetic woman played as a grotesque: Life is sweet is a film I could love ('old' King's Cross, small disappointments, small mercies) but the sister character is so overblown.

I'm never going to agree with your opinions on the Loach project but understand where you are coming from though plax and peace to you!

Leigh spent a lot of time being a snide patronising wanker I think, the recent history films feel like an anomaly to some extent

I still find his shitty caricature movies at least less boring than Loach. But yah his late period stuff, in particular the last two have been some of hist best.

My gosh "Black Jack" is great.

Just was face to face with a kestrel hawk at my daughter’s college.

there is a guy who lives across the road from me who looks a lot like a young Brian Glover, but balder than he was in the late 60's and with tribal tatts.

If you have a very high threshold for emotional manipulation--I don't know if even Frank Capra would have included the dog stuff here (twice over)--I recommend The Old Oak. I think it would be a better film without that, and without some of the speechifying (Yara and TJ get one each), but there are still many fine moments throughout. I think the only other Loach films I've seen are Poor Cow and Kes, both long ago. So another disclaimer: I don't know how this squares with the quality of all his other films.

And I love dogs!

Reading up some, I didn't realize Loach was 87 (should have, or at least close) or that he says this will be his last film (something he's said a couple of other times, evidently). I won't withdraw anything I say above, but if he does follow through on that and walks away, I expect this will be remembered whenever the subject of greatest final films comes up.

Director's Final Films

I have a nutty story about Ken Loach. Back in the late '00s, I went to see a schoolmate of mine who had returned home to London. He knew how much I loved films so he took me to the BFI, and as we walked around, he ran into a woman he knew who was with a much older man. He and the woman started talking, and it was one of those things where you end up withdrawing because it's clearly a private moment between two people that doesn't involve you. So as I'm just hanging about, I make eye contact with the older guy and I'm just like "how you doing?" and he's like "all right" and we proceed to have a polite, cordial but thoroughly bland chat since we were complete strangers who on the surface didn't remotely have much in common. Finally my friend wraps up his conversation and we all part ways. He immediately apologizes, explaining that not only was that an ex-girlfriend (with whom he had a recent break-up) but she was now working for Ken Loach, and that was the guy I was talking to. I 100% knew who he was, I just had no idea what he looked like before. And he would've said something but it was just a terribly awkward encounter to see his ex. Totally understood, but still, ugh...

Anyway, there's a massive Ken Loach retrospective that starts at Film Forum this week. Highly recommend it because so many of those films aren't easily found in the best quality here in the U.S. (They may not stream or they may only have old SD transfers available for home viewing, in which case seeing it in 35mm will be a real treat.)

https://filmforum.org/series/ken-loach