When a bus load of Syrian refugees are housed in a small, and struggling, former mining village in County Durham the reaction of some of the locals is depressingly predictable. They're called ragheads, accused of paedophilia, and the children are bullied at school. It's a sorry story and it's one that's not unlike real events that are happening all over the country right now.
But Ken Loach's latest, and possibly last ever, film The Old Oak is far more nuanced than to simply paint the British working class as a bunch of misinformed racist thugs. Loach (and screenwriter Laverty who is, of course, on board for this) can be schematic, even dogmatic, in his film making but that wasn't a criticism I could make of The Old Oak, a film that - ultimately - was more about hope than despair.
TJ Ballantyne (Dave Turner) is the landlord of The Old Oak. He seems a good man at heart but he's struggling and, we soon learn, he has been for a very long time. He lives alone with his dog Mara, the pub is falling down and he can't afford to fix it, and some of the locals are unkind to him. He has to tolerate them because he relies on their custom.
When Yara (Ebli Mara), a young Syrian refugee who has arrived in the North East with her mum, her sister, and her brothers, arrives at the pub to try and find the man, Rocco (Neil Leiper), who broke her beloved camera, she strikes up a friendship with TJ. He promises to fix, or replace, the camera and soon she learns about the area's history.
As do we. We learn how the miner's strike of the eighties divided and destroyed the community and how tensions that were built up during that time still linger and we learn how The Old Oak is pretty much the only place in the village left for people to go. Yara takes a keen interest in the village's history, helps out at a local sports day, and takes photos of the villagers - including her fellow Syrians.
Slowly she and others win some, not all, of them round. At the same time, TJ and a few others, most notably aid volunteer Laura (Claire Rodgerson), learn about the war in Syria, Bashar al-Assad's horrific regime, how the rest of the world is doing nothing to help the Syrian people, and even how Yara's own personal history inevitably ties in to the tragedy of modern day Syria.
There's a particularly moving scene, one of many, when TJ and Yara visit Durham Cathedral. TJ tells Yara the story of the one thousand year old cathedral and, as the choir rehearse, Yara tells TJ about the ancient Roman city of Palmyra in central Syria and how it was destroyed by ISIS in 2015.
Eventually, most of the villagers and most of the refugees come to recognise that both have had very hard lives, very precarious existences, through no fault of their own. TJ, Laura, and Yara open up the long closed back room of the pub and serve free meals to families (both refugee families and village families) in an attempt to bring the two, initially divided, communities together.
It's a huge success and the scenes in which everyone eats together are quite joyous but some of the locals, specifically Charlie (Trevor Fox) and the boozed up and rage filled Vic (Chris McGlade), aren't at all happy about this. TJ attempts to bring them on side but he's still got to pay the bills and he's still got his own demons to deal with.
It's testament to Loach that TJ's story and Yara's story are depicted with equal compassion and with some great supporting performances from a cast who barely have a Wikipedia hyperlink between them The Old Oak ends up being quite an emotional watch. The clear message written through the entire film though, as - I think - has been Loach's message since he made Poor Cow and Kes back in the late sixties - is that we must not let those in power divide us. We are stronger together.
No comments:
Post a Comment