The Old Oak
Reported to be Ken Loach's final film, The Old Oak concerns the bringing together of a bitter working-class community with a busload of Syrian refugees. Tensions soon give way to shared humanity in this rousing call for solidarity
The Old Oak is the closing chapter in Ken Loach's loose trilogy set in the North-East of England looking at the state of working-class Britain after 13 years of Tory rule. I, Daniel Blake concerned the inadequacies of the welfare state; Sorry We Missed You detailed the waking nightmare of the gig economy; and here Loach turns his attention to a community that’s been left decimated by deindustrialisation.
The title refers to a dilapidated boozer in County Durham populated by middle-aged men – most of them sons of miners – who’ve long forgotten the solidarity of the miners' strike. They’re bitter about being stuck in a dead-end town and angry when they see Syrian refugees dumped in their community. The Old Oak’s landlord, T.J., is more generous than his patrons: he bonds with Yara, one of the refugees, who has an idea to bring the two communities together by sharing meals in the pub’s long-unused back room.
This dynamic, where the have-nots are pitted against the have-nothings, has been the Tories' tactic for years and Loach’s film is a compassionate call for unity. Loach delivers his themes with an unsophisticated bluntness, but there are enough rousing moments in The Old Oak to forgive the heavy-handedness of Paul Laverty's script and the film's occasional slips into Capra-esque sentimentality. This is rumoured to be Loach's last film. Taken together with I, Daniel Blake and Sorry We Missed You, it’s a deeply moving work from a voice who's still much needed and won't be easily replaced.
Released 29 Sep by Studio Canal; certificate 15