‘The Old Oak’ movie review: Ken Loach’s swan song is socially vital but tediously typical
For his so-called ‘final movie’, The Old Oak, legendary British director Ken Loach, known for his insistence that he will retire after his next film, has once again returned to northeast England to deliver a narrative typical of his cinematic style. Both pulling at the heartstrings and tugging at the political synapses of the mind, his latest piece of earnest filmmaking feels vitally important and yet somewhat tedious at the same time.
Dave Turner plays TJ Ballantyne, a County Durham landlord whose pub barely hangs together by its hinges but still serves as one of the last public spaces for a community that once thrived during the days of the prosperous mining industry. TJ’s village is run down with poverty, with boarded-up houses and malnourishment, and when a bus-load of Syrian refugees arrive to seek solace from the danger of their war-torn country, the locals are angered by the fact that charity doesn’t appear to begin at home.
TJ is typical of a Loach protagonist in that he’s a beacon of light and kindness in a cruel-hearted world despite having suffered the slings and arrows of misfortune in the preceding years. But one gets the feeling, as with many parts of The Old Oak, that he’s just too typical, to the point of eye-rolling frustration.
Loach’s film is undoubtedly an important one from a social and political standpoint and manages to cram an awful lot into just 113 minutes: the danger of XL Bullies, racial prejudice, online bullying, and the poverty of Britain, but it’s delivered in a style that is so Loach that it can sometimes feel that the director has finally parodied himself on his final outing.
The acting, particularly of the English performers (though admittedly some are non-professional), is never quite convincing enough to make one care about the vital social plight of either the poverty-stricken locals or (in honesty) the Syrian refugees, beyond the kind of issue highlighting narratives that Loach has previously demonstrated. Indeed, the film feels as though it was written by an AI program that had been given Loach’s filmography, as well as a good dose of contemporary political messaging, as its prompts.
The fact that a scene which has absolutely nothing to do with the actual premise of the film brought about the most tears from the audience is suggestive that either Loach failed in his attempt to move us to sympathy or he included it as a sly nod to the fact that we’ve been desensitised to Syrian destruction on television and talk of British foodbanks and unemployment on tabloid websites, in which case, bravo.
There’s naturally a kindness to proceedings, as we can always expect from the filmmaker, and Loach puts forth the notion that a community will always be more robust and each party benefit if they come together and set aside their differences. But by depicting the locals as essentially racist idiots, it’s hard to feel sympathy for them, even if, yes, their communities have been undone by a lack of industry and years of austerity.
So The Old Oak perhaps suffers from a sense of being just a touch too, well, Loach, and this a great shame because Ebla Mari does a terrific job of playing TJ’s Syrian refugee and photographer friend Mara, and, as stated, there is a message present of profound importance: live with love and care and understanding, even at the cost of one’s own self. But it’s undone mainly by a kind of hesitancy to the film, as though it has itself become aware of its own place in the Ken Loach canon.
