Ken Loach: With the film The Old Oak I give you hope and I withdraw

CSome interviews are understandable better starting from the end. “Don’t give up, for heaven’s sake, don’t give up!” it is recommended – when saying goodbye – Ken Loach. Born into a family of miners and graduated from Oxford, at 87 years old – after 57 of militant films and incalculable awards – he has not lost his combative nature and interest in the latest.

Indeed: he has even found a bit of optimism again. The previous two films had left us with a bad taste in our mouths: in I, Daniel Blake (2016) the carpenter with a heart attack, who is denied sickness benefits, dies before receiving justice; in Sorry, We Missed You (2019) the unemployed person who acts as a courier remains trapped in the inhuman rhythm of deliveries.

This time we leave the cinema equally moved, but not dejected: The Old Oak, in theaters from November 16th, is the demonstration that, having reached rock bottom, there is room to rise again. That hope is a revolutionary gesture (if you believe in the possibilities of change, you fight and don’t give up) and that unity makes us strong.

Moved, not dejected

The plot? The inhabitants of a town in the North East of England, undermined by the closure of the mines decided by Margaret Thatcher in 1984, they oppose the arrival of the Syrian refugees: the situation explodes when the only pub – as well as the only meeting place – becomes their canteen. But the “unlikely” friendship between the elderly bartender and a young immigrant passionate about photography will have powerful effects.

First of all, a doubt: is it the farewell to the camera as they whisper?
Yes, I think so.

Ninetieth birthday

Why? We need voices like hers.
Well, to film you have to be away for a year or so: it would be mean to leave my wife alone (Lesley Ashton, whom he married in 1962 and with whom he had four children, ed) a long time at this age. If I started now – between research, casting, filming, editing – I would be ready for my ninetieth birthday… No, come on, you have to be realistic: maintaining physical and emotional energy is quite difficult. These are dark times, right? Dark and complex, however I believe there are always possibilities. Really. The rate of exploitation continues to increase, there is a constant increase in poverty and, what’s more, we are faced with catastrophe, a climate disaster. It’s scary, yet not hopeless. The important thing is to stay “on the same team”.

The sense of community

Meaning what?
Having the sense of community, there is an innate solidarity in the working class. It’s an instinct: if someone is in difficulty, you give them a hand. The strength of workers in the 19th century was being physically together, having the same problem, the same identifiable enemy (the employer) and so they came together spontaneously. Now with the digital economy, the digital society, streaming, people are moving away. And this plays into the hands of the Right, who have an intelligent strategy, because it is based on some truth.

An example?
When the refugees arrived, the children did not speak English and the schools were not given any additional teachers. Imagine these educators who already have 30 students and find themselves with another six who don’t know the language… If they take care of them, they neglect the others, whose parents complain and they’re right! Ditto with healthcare. Unfortunately, the element of reality is quickly transformed into: “It’s their fault that I’m here; they have greater subsidies and bigger houses than ours”: we hear it every single day, and the situation leads to racism. The struggle is between these two elements: the solidarity of working classthe propaganda of politicians.

But in many cases it is the working class itself that votes for them.
That’s what happened with Hitler. I mean: there was appalling poverty in Germany after the great war. The Social Democrats failed, two great revolutionaries such as Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were assassinated… People moved to the right out of desperation. With the support, obviously, of speculators, companies and the press. The newspapers in England were favorable to the Führer! The Daily Mail titled “Long live the black shirts”, and we already knew about anti-Semitism… This is the lesson of history. And it is one of the reasons why we wanted to tell the two points of view, that of the inhabitants and that of the immigrants, survivors of the unspeakable. Demonstrating with a narrative (and not with a nice little speech, which would kill everything) how, in the end, the sense of solidarity makes you strong enough to win.

Non-professional interpreters

And demonstrating it with strictly non-professional interpreters.
You don’t lie to the camera: you see the texture of their skin, you see how they look at food, how they sit, how they relate. An actor, immersed in an existence that is not his, would sound false: it could be an excellent performance, but inevitably artificial. And, furthermore, you want the audience not to get distracted: “Oh, I remember this face, but what was that Hollywood blockbuster in which he acted so well?”. (smiles)

However, this complicates her work, it will be more difficult to direct someone who has no experience…
Oh no, much easier. Very! Nobody has a trailer, nobody has a personal assistant to bring them food, nobody has a car: we travel together in a van. You are one of the group. And I don’t have to explain to Dave (Dave Turner, the protagonist, ed) how to run a pub: has run a pub before. I don’t have to talk to him about the community: he is part of it, he lives nearby. Rather, I am the one asking him.

The Old Oak It was highly applauded at Cannes, but it didn’t win. It seems that Ruben Östlund was against it: it would have been his third Palme d’Or later The wind caressing the grass And I, Daniel Blakewhile he is stopped at two, for The Square And Triangle of Sadness.
Who is Östlund?

The Swedish director presided over the Jury.
The point of a film is: what are you trying to communicate? If you start fretting about winning, you’ve already lost. Humiliating, right? And how can that come to mind when you work with those who have been tortured? A woman who lost her legs told us a story so atrocious that we couldn’t include it. How do you interact with her and then worry about getting a damn prize?

Ken Loach and the meadow

But how much space remains today for socially engaged cinema?
I do not know. Why on earth should commercial cinema finance works that attack it? It would be up to grant-funded institutions such as the British Film Institute (or the equivalent in other countries), but they are obsessed with style, not content.

Wasn’t this also true for the BBC in the 1960s, where you managed to pass off a series of revolutionary docudramas due to their strong social commitment?
We managed to escape their radar… (smiles). The only problem was a quote from Trotsky: “You must cut it!”. “Okay!”. We brought the “sweetened” version to supervise and then broadcast the full version (laughs). But we didn’t get fired, we survived.

Goodbye, relax with your wife.
I’ll try… He always gives me tasks, that’s the problem: “The grass needs to be cut”. “Cut the grass.” “Haven’t you cut the grass yet?”.

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