My friend Flamia asked me in Bar Hispano what I thought of Loach’s latest. I tried to make the argument that the Loach aesthetics are predicated on a social realist furrow he has been ploughing for decades and that his narratives have a predictability to them that neuters any real engagement. Whilst maintaining that this is still valid, there is a dextrous tugging at the heart strings employed in this by-numbers tale of an oddball friendship between a fetching Syrian refugee and a gnarly veteran of post-Thatcher decay. TJ comes from a family of miners, and with the closure of the pits, he and his village have lost their sense of identity. (This despite the fact that TJ’s father died in a mining accident when a seam collapsed three miles out under the North Sea.) Yara and her family are Syrian refugees, struggling to adapt to the harsh realities of post-Brexit Britain. The regulars at the pub don’t take kindly to TJ choosing to support the Syrians and TJ finds himself caught between communities. Good will out in the end, Loach reassures us, with his bittersweet denouement. But there’s something which feels pre-packed, ready to be sold, about The Old Oak and Loach and Laverty’s reluctance to go beyond the range of cliché feels as though it short-changes their grander ambitions to tell stories about contemporary Britain.
Perhaps ironically, another friend I met yesterday told me he’s been watching Pennies from Heaven, which adopted a different register to talk about British society, and one can’t help feeling that it’s a shame Potter and Loach never got together to pool their differences.
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