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A landlord of a failing pub in County Durham befriends a Syrian refugee and attempts to quell tensions between their two communities in this sobering film that may well be Loach’s last.
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British television programme demonised welfare recipients, says Social Democrats TD Cian O’Callaghan
Ken Loach, that old warhorse of the English left, has been promising to retire for the last decade, but The Old Oak may well be the 85-year-old’s final feature film. Over the course of an extraordinary career, in films like Kes, Raining Stones, Carla’s Song, Sweet Sixteen and The Wind That Shakes the Barley, he’s confronted thorny social issues and railed against iniquity. He uses non-actors to enhance a feeling of earthy veracity, and since the mid-1990s has maintained a close collaboration with the Scottish screenwriter Paul Laverty.
"The more specific and precise you are, the more universal [a story] can be.”
The hero of Left-wing cinema keeps hitting his usual talking points in increasingly drab style. Is it time to put away the megaphone?