Stock photo.

Syrian refugees arrive in an English village in a former mining community.

The testimony in the pictures makes it clear that they are not well liked; the locals do not want them, and fitting in seems complex.

T.J. Ballantyne, the son of a now-deceased former miner and owner of The Old Oak the only local pub enduring, though in dire financial straits, lends himself to helping the Syrians and giving the locals pause for thought, without running the risk of losing the last of the local customers.

Houses are depreciating in value, so selling them to move is an impossible solution to practice.

Refugees are seen as the cause of this devaluation, as well as the encroachment of different and hostile cultures.

The war between the poor seems inevitable as even the locals find it difficult to raise enough money for survival.

The pub is also the only public space where people can meet, and the backroom, now disused, had once been the place to celebrate and hold ceremonies; now used as a warehouse it sees only the presence of photographs that recall the times of solidarity, strength and resistance of the miners and the community.

Presented in competition at the Cannes Film Festival 2023 and following the frantic Sorry We Missed You, here Ken Loach confirms his consistent socio/political/cinematic militancy with a flawed, strongly didactic and rhetorical film, at times pathetic but absolutely, unavoidably effective and necessary especially since it should be his last film.

The miners' banner speaks of SOLIDARITY, STRENGTH and RESISTANCE, themes incontrovertibly present in the filmmaker's filmography as, moreover, those of labor, the defeat of the left, betrayal, alienation, frustration and the despair that overtakes when there is no work and the community becomes impoverished.

The emotion that comes from the telling of the story seems inevitable because of the sharpness with which Loach manages to construct figures, as in this case Ballantyne's, that pierce any emotional resistance.

A difficult past his that also accompanied him in making extreme decisions along with resorting to that name, for a dog from which he was picked up and brought back to life, called Marra, which meant to the miners, the friend but above all "the one who has your back." A man full of despair and that hope defined as "obscene" because it is now "offstage," as the etymology of the word represents: a man who has stopped fighting but cannot stop fighting; a man who has no faith but cannot stop believing; a man who has no strength but cannot stop resisting.

A film, perhaps Loach's last film that feels like his portrait, that of a life dedicated to the art of struggle, of solidarity, of resistance, of the impossibility of giving up even one idea, that of class struggle, of the union of marginality and the importance of the dignity of labor.

He a British activist and a member of the British Free Cinema artistic current, resorts to the theme of scapegoating as the basis of political/economic social hostilities that emerges powerfully in the community narrative but also to the more intimate and individual theme of suicide and trust.

There is something indelibly written in the backstory that confirms the constant theme of Loach's filmmaking: "together we don't starve," because another world is still possible for the filmmaker born into a working-class family and an Oxford graduate.

We are not sure that this kind of cinematography that has been with us for years and that we will be nostalgic for is still possible: "why should commercial cinema finance works that attack it?" indeed, argues Loach, who also in this film has resorted to supporting actors, because to the camera one does not lie, no one in his films has a trailer, a personal assistant; one travels together in a van, one is part of a group.

Yet another, perhaps the last film that exposes and testifies to Loach's indelible idea, his genuine art, his crafted cinema, his vision:

Sorry Loach, we will miss you!

08-Nov-2023 by Beatrice