![]() ![]() My short-term memory is fading and my eyesight is not what it was, and then there’s all the natural shocks that flesh is heir to.” A rueful smile. “I can’t see getting round the course again. Now The Old Oak, which was shot in Easington, Horden and Murton is off to Cannes, where Loach previously won the Palme d’Or with The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006) and again with I, Daniel Blake. “It endorsed it in a way you wouldn’t want it endorsed – there is a nasty, dangerous element that, when times are hard for everyone, looks for scapegoats and so the most desperate people imaginable are suddenly to be blamed.” A far-right mob chanting “get them out” rioted outside a hotel in Knowsley, Merseyside, that housed asylum seekers. In February the film became even more grimly topical. Ken Loach: ‘I can’t see getting round the course again.’ Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Observer One of the poorest areas in the country accepting more than its fair share of Syrian refugees crystallised so much.” “There was a sense of completing a little sequence of films because the first two had been so tragic in a way – tragic is perhaps too grand a word – but we had seen really bad things happen in the benefits system and the gig economy and the new area of exploitation. This is the third in a series of films made by Loach in the north- east, following I, Daniel Blake (2016) and Sorry We Missed You (2019). So he was determined I would be educated. He had passed the scholarship to go to grammar school in 1916 but his mother wouldn’t let him go because she couldn’t afford the uniform and that bugged him all his life. He did an apprenticeship in the pits as an electrician, came out and got a factory job. He came from a family of 10 who were miners and was a clever man. “My father, who was an electrical engineer in a machine tool factory in Coventry, was disappointed because he had put a lot of store in that. I got hooked on plays and just carried that on. I got into university, and even started eating dinners at Gray’s Inn in order to take the bar exams and qualify, but then thought ‘this is not for me’. “I quite fancied the law, having no lawyer friends or relatives, but having read the biographies of the Edwardian barristers and advocates Marshall Hall and Norman Birkett, and thought ‘ah, that’s the life for me’. He reached the age of 86 during the filming which led to the choir in Durham Cathedral singing an impromptu ‘Happy Birthday to You’ in mid-shoot, to his embarrassment and to the affectionate entertainment of cast and crew.Ī career in film was not his original plan, he explains when we meet in his tiny Soho office earlier this year as the editing nears completion. If it’s nearly last orders in the pub it is also a last film for Loach, one of Britain’s most prolific and most political of directors. House rules: Fighting, drugs, wilful damage to property: minimum one year ban. A notice on the wall from its real past which has been retained for the shoot catches the eye: ‘Welcome. The pub in the former pit town of Murton near Durham that has been transformed into the Old Oak used to be called The Victoria. Some locals object, not wanting any “fucking ragheads” to be “dumped on us”. Into town comes a group of Syrian refugees to be rehoused, including a self-confident young woman, Yara (played by the Syrian actor Ebla Mari) who likes taking photos of what she encounters. There is still a pub, the eponymous Old Oak, run by a former miner, TJ Ballantyne, played by Dave Turner, but it is on its last legs, kept afloat by a ragbag of disgruntled and opinionated regulars. Shops are boarded up, money is scarce, divisions over the 1984 miners’ strike linger. The story is set in an anonymous former mining town decades after the pit closures. Ken Loach and his old compadres, writer Paul Laverty and producer Rebecca O’Brien, could not have chosen a more pertinent time for shooting their latest film, The Old Oak, which premieres at the Cannes film festival this month. I t’s June 2022, a week of rail workers’ strikes are under way and refugees are in the news whether arriving from Ukraine or via boats across the channel despite the threat of transportation to Rwanda. ![]()
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