Ken Loach still has more to say against The Man in Society with his cinema, that was made clear coming out of the Cannes press conference for his latest film. the old oak.
We ask Loach if the reports are true; Yeah the old oak it is truly its end. The director replied: “One day at a time. If you wake up in the morning and you’re not in the obituary column; one day at a time.”
Loach, 87, told THR in April: “Realistically, it would be hard to do a feature film again” given that “their facilities are deteriorating. Your short-term memory is gone and my eyesight is pretty bad right now, so it’s pretty complicated.”
However, Loach stressed today how important it is for cinema, especially with younger filmmakers, to stay vibrant while the art form challenges those with power.
“It’s not up to the directors and writers if they can make movies; now the doors are closing for young people who want to engage with the problems of their time with a political understanding that is not simply a social understanding. That’s a big difference because political understanding means you challenge those in power. Why should those in power with money when their system is failing support movies that should challenge them? Loach exclaimed.
Filmmakers can no longer operate in a safe space to express their concerns about society according to the filmmaker. “That’s the problem,” he said.
“Organizing the opposition is the problem,” Loach said.
old oak follows a pub owner, TJ Ballantyne (Dave Turner), whose premises are located in a deprived former North East mining town. His clients are angry with life, falling home prices and immigrants, and tensions rise when a busload of terrified Syrians arrives. TJ makes a bridge to the Syrians, using the pub as a venue for a food bank-style communal dinner. He also forms a connection with Yara (Ebla Mari), a young Syrian woman who lives with her brother and her elderly mother; the family anxious to learn the fate of her father, who has been imprisoned by the Assad regime.
Loach said the inspiration for the old oak it came from working in the Northeast on his last two films and witnessing the abandonment of a strong industry community. “We saw refugees from the Syrian war come in and put them in these areas where they would not be seen,” the director explained, citing that there were more Syrian refugees in that part of the UK than anywhere else in the country. “The government doesn’t want you to know they’re there,” he said.
Loach singled out former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair “for creating the refugee problem” by backing the invasion of Iraq. “He should be facing The Hague for war crimes,” the filmmaker said.
“We need a government that empowers the people in terms of property, services and production,” Loach said, “not for big corporations to make a profit and declare war on the entire world.”
