The Brooklyn Rail

Mainstream American cinema is not for confronting the working class experience. Hollywood is the Dream Factory—no place here for the waking nightmare of state-sponsored class warfare: the stolen agency, the withheld benefits, the silenced voices, the infantilizing indignities. Exceptions slip through: Midnight Cowboy, Claudine, 9 to 5, Matewan, First Cow. But by and large, the consequences of a politic that subjugates the powerless and ensures a perpetual, and perpetually exploitable, underclass are either ignored entirely or treated as crass plot devices. Arthur Fleck in Joker, debased and victimized by a punitive state, is not an interrogation of such systems but fuel for his transformation into a homicidal clown—it’s not commentary but cynical poverty porn.

Conscientious, contemporary class drama? Not in corporate films. Genuine stories about the delivery drivers, warehouse pickers, baristas, retail workers, nurses, home health aides—those “essential workers” essential only as grist for the profit mill—can’t compete with fantastical Avengers adventures. And if working people show up in these films—be they gig workers or union laborers or bottom-rung white collar professionals—they’re typically flattened into a bundle of clichés: uneducated, lazy, burnouts, low-rent criminals, takers. For starters. Configuring the working class as such seems to be a narrative necessity in this most selfish and libertarian of nations.

We must look elsewhere for honest narratives centered on the invisible engines of our global, algorithmic, hyper-individualistic society. When we do, we find the films of Ken Loach.

For more than six decades, the British director has doggedly stood in solidarity with the cast-aside and voiceless. From Poor Cow (1967) and Kes (1969) to Raining Stones (1993) and My Name is Joe (1998), Loach has elevated the humanity and everyday courage of, in his words, society’s “nonpersons.” His deceptively simple stories of families and neighborhoods, captured with an unflinching gaze, vibrate with anger at the systemic injustices that result in the deliberate degradation and dehumanization of the working class. These are actual human beings and communities, sold out by Tories and the Labour Party alike, who pay the price of austerity and bear the brunt of neoliberal depravity.

These themes are particularly pronounced in Loach’s recent films, all written by Paul Laverty, which form a kind of loose trilogy of contemporary Northeastern experience in the UK in the Big Tech era. I, Daniel Blake (2016), which won Loach his second Palme d’Or (following The Wind That Shakes the Barley), follows an irascible pencil-and-paper Newcastle carpenter trying to secure unemployment benefits while trapped in the cul-de-sac of a “digital by default,” humiliation-as-a-policy bureaucracy. Daniel Blake’s struggle is mirrored and complicated by Katie, the struggling single mother of two he befriends after she’s denied assistance on a technicality. Sorry We Missed You (2019), also set in Newcastle, is Loach and Laverty’s assault on the inhumanity of the gig economy, a system of last resort and false hope for a family of four eking out an existence after losing their home in the 2008 recession.

The Old Oak, which opened stateside in April, concludes the cycle—and possibly the eighty-seven-year-old filmmaker’s career. Set in 2016, it confronts the ramifications of the government dismantling a union mining town, letting it rot, then using it as a dumping ground for undesirables. In this case, that means Syrian refugees, who become targets of real world and online harassment by locals wallowing in self-defeat and lurching toward the dead-end racism of the dispossessed.

Incisive, urgent, and tough like its predecessors, the film also reconnects Loach with his other lifelong belief, that change is necessary and will be driven by the working class. It’s a sensibility found throughout Loach’s filmography but noticeably absent in I, Daniel Blake and Sorry We Missed You. As indignant as they are, there’s also a mood of resignation, even defeat. Anyone at the mercy of power structures can sympathize with the tone of these films, but it’s at odds with Loach’s stated worldview. The Old Oak is a correction, imbued with something unexpected: hope.

The Old Oak is anchored by TJ (Dave Turner), an ex-miner and owner of the titular pub, and Yara (Ebla Mari), a stoic young Syrian photographer. Their friendship initially challenges their communities, and themselves. Soon, though, the village’s long-dormant spirit of solidarity reawakens. Locals and refugees gather for community events; they share communal meals; Syrians and Britons find common cause. It’s not a total embrace, of course. Racist pub regulars become increasingly menacing, but collective cooperation, once so vital to the village, proves more powerful than flailing grievance.

Still, nothing is easy at the Old Oak or in the film. Setbacks follow successes as easily and painfully as in other Loach films. But a perseverance and courage take hold that’s inspired and, frankly, surprising given the pessimism of I, Daniel Blake and Sorry We Missed You. Those earlier films are defined by the determination of their characters. And they contain rousing moments of resistance: Daniel Blake graffitiing his demands for a hearing on the side of a governmental office building; Abby, the emotionally and spiritually spent mother of Sorry We Missed You, berating her husband’s boss after one humiliation too many. But things always snap back to a kind of despairing inevitability.

That’s emotionally where The Old Oak begins, but it has a different ending in mind. Closing the mine seeded a bone-deep hopelessness felt by everyone and passed down as a legacy to future generations. Villagers are listless, resigned to the reality of vanished opportunity, financial scarcity, bare cupboards and refrigerators. When refugees receive donated food, clothes, bedding, bikes, locals wonder, “Why them? Don’t we count?” Loach and Laverty know they do, and they allow them the agency to reconnect with their dignity. Yara takes portraits of the staff and clientele at the local beauty parlor, making the village’s women feel seen for the first time in years. Electricians, plumbers, and other skilled tradespeople put their talents toward refurbishing the Old Oak’s long-dormant community room, side by side with similarly talented refugees. British and Syrian children alike play organized sports in a meaningful way, some for the first time ever. Incrementally, encounter by encounter and conversation by conversation, locals see the Syrians as friends, not invaders, the Syrians learn to trust their new neighbors, and the groups come together to proclaim a new community.

The pub is central to this transformation, and the locals look to TJ for leadership. But the true catalyst is Yara. Loach’s characters tend to have things happen to them. Even their rebellions have limits, restricted by their assigned roles in oppressive systems. Yara, who escapes something worse than the United Kingdom’s rigid and punitive class and political structures, is the rare exception. She suffers the loss of her home, her friends, and her father. She’s treated as an interloper and enemy in her new country. She has every reason to be defeated. But she refuses to fail her family, her people, herself by losing hope, by allowing the Assad regime and petty racists to steal her dignity. Her defiance gives her fellow refugees and the villagers the strength to persevere and imagine something better.

The solidarity these groups forge—the solidarity Loach consistently champions—rejects the politics and tactics that keeps the working class separate, disorganized, suspicious, and under the boot. Manipulative politicians and those in the One Percent exploiting, or even suggesting, fear of the other deflects attention from confronting power structures. The Old Oak is Loach and Laverty’s most explicit condemnation of this tactic, going so far as having TJ state the case outright: “We all look for a scapegoat when life goes to shit, don’t we? We never look up. It’s always look down. Blame the poor bastards below us. It’s always their fault. That makes it easier to stamp on the poor bastards’ faces, doesn’t it?”

We don’t need a film to tell us this. Evidence abounds, especially in New York, where The Old Oak should be required viewing. It might help quell the anti-migrant fervor that has led many self-professed liberals to debase themselves and embrace MAGA tactics to dehumanize men, women, and children fleeing institutional corruption, brutal cartel violence, and crushing want in Central America. At the very least, it might encourage these “real New Yorkers” to take a break from punching down and see the true enemies are the exploitative ultra-rich and the venal bureaucrats who serve at their pleasure.

Ken Loach’s films achieve universality by appealing to our common humanity across geographies. The battle is ongoing; his films continue to disturb and incite us across the decades. If The Old Oak is indeed his final go, it serves as a fitting coda to the filmmaker’s oeuvre: fervent, pugnacious, and discomfiting, with a dash of hope and (qualified) optimism.

The film also gives Loach a perfect parting shot. As the credits roll, a sea of parading miners hoist colorful banners attesting to generations of working class accomplishment, sacrifice, and endurance. One of them is a bold purple and gold, made by Syrian artisans celebrating the village’s historical and rejuvenated collectivist spirit. At the center is a towering oak tree, surrounded by script in English and Arabic that speaks for this community and the working class everywhere:

Solidarity Strength Resistance

A deceptively simple slogan smuggling a provocative challenge and call to arms—Ken Loach’s career could have no better ending.