The Old Oak

I am one of the projectionists in the local small town cinema with only two or three shows per week. The end titles of a film is not only for crediting all people involved in the production, it is also a time to reflect and contemplate on what you experienced when watching the movie, and you can measure how touched people were by how long they stay during the end titles. When The Old Oak was the movie for the evening not a single one in the audience got up from their seats until the last line in the credits had passed, the screen had faded to black and the curtains closed. That is a mark of a very touching movie!

I don't think I've ever seen a film that emotionally hooked me as quickly as The Old Oak did. Right from the off you are dragged into the visceral and powerful emotion of this piece, and it rarely relents.

It depicts events after a group of Syrian refugees is placed in an ex mining town in the north-east of England. Despite it being a fiction, the realism that Loach brings to the film and the fact that anybody living in Britain will unfortunately recognise the language and sentiment makes it an intensely devastating film. But it is not all doom and gloom. It also shows the best of humanity and how people can rally around each other, which also makes for a truly inspiring film.

I actually think with a film like this the technical elements (even though they are mostly great) are actually irrelevant. The message of this film is so crucial and powerful and is conveyed so well, and that is the most important thing. It is impossible not be stirred emotionally by this film in only a way the best film makers can achieve.

With the awful rhetoric surrounding refugees that is encouraged and perpetrated by those in power, films like this feel more crucial than ever, making this an absolute must watch piece of cinema.

I thought that Yara and TJ were very good characters. In fact, I'm disappointed to have seen an interview with the actor who played TJ who said that's going to be his one and only film. I'd really like to see him again in more movies. I am sure we will see the actress who played Yara again. I like films that are naturalistic. There are so many films in which conversations are so slick and word perfect and that simply does not reflect real life for most people. Both Yara and TJ were like people that I have met in real life and so I could relate to them very easily in the film..

I've seen criticism of this work based on some characters in the film being "wooden ". But again, people can be pretty wooden in real life and so it is not unreasonable to have that depicted in films here and there. We can't all be as smooth as George Clooney or Meryl Streep.

The character, Charlie put me in mind of Mark Kermode (due to his looks, not his conduct). To me, he was very much like Mark Kermode with a grey rinse.

I thought that the actor who played the electrician was very good and very reminiscent of contractors I have met.

I found the film moving and engaging.

It's a refugee drama in a declining English village near Durham, England, set in 2016. It follows the experiences of the owner of the last little pub, The Old Oak, in a dying former mining town. T. J. Ballantyne (Dave Turner) is divorced, and his distant son no longer speaks to him. His pub is slowly dying along with the village when some Syrian refugees move into the town. T. J.'s only companion is a dog called Marra (Lola). Some of his regulars, like Vic (Chris McGlade), Charlie (Trevor Fox), and Eddy (Col Tait), are vicious racists, but T. J. provides some assistance to Laura (Claire Rodgerson), the woman heading the local refugee assistance efforts.

One of the refugees, Yara (Ebla Mari), is a skilled photographer who has learned good English in a refugee camp. Her mother, Fatima (Amna Al Ali), and three younger siblings are with her but speak little English. Her father, a tailor, is missing back in Syria is unknown.

The film follows the tension between the locals and newcomers and T. J.'s evolving relationship with both sides. "The Old Oak" contains no highly dramatic events, but relationships and thoughts about hope change as the story unfolds.

"The Old Oak" is a primarily gentle film about human relationships in an economically challenged community. Turner and Mari are outstanding, though Mari's character is a bit too saintly. Occasionally, the script gets a little didactic, slowing the pace. But it's a great story about refugee engagement in a small traditional village.

According to himself "The old oak" is his last film. Not very strange if you consider that Ken Loach is already 87 years of age. He already made films when I was hardly born and in the meantime I am nearly sixty now.

"The old oak" (2023) is the last episode of the "austerity trilogy" (all films situated in or around Newcastle upon Tyne). In the first episode "I, Daniel Blake" (2016) a poor man struggles against government bureaucracy. In the second episode "Sorry we missed you" (2019) the main character is misled to become a fake entrepeneur but in reality is a worker without the usual rights.

"The old oak" is about poor people (workers in a region that economically has never recovered from the closing of coal mines) that are obliged to live together with other poor people (Syrian refugees).

Loach treats this theme with much more idealism (and sentimentality) than the raw reality and unhappy endings of the previous two episodes of the "austerity trilogy". The main character, pub owner T. J. Ballantyne (Dave Turner), is almost too good to be true and to a great extent he succeeds in bringing the local and Syrian communities together. Of course there are a few old men in the cast that turn out to be incurable racists, but they seem to have lost their feeling with society.

Keeping hope is important, but nevertheless is "The old oak" in my opinion the weakest film of the austerity trilogy". Not only contrasts the idealism of the film with the raw reality of the two other episodes, it also contrasts with the political reality of the moment. I am not only thinking of the results of the recent elections in the Netherlands (victory for a populist party that is fiercly anti immagration) but also about the immagration policy in the Netherlands (and Europe wide) in which immigrants are treated as dangerous people that ought to be minimized instead of as people in need that ought to be helped.

The four racists in the film have unfortunately not lost their feeling with society but are perfectly in sync with it. The "Oppressed people of all nations unite" of "The old oak" sounds very much like the Socialist slogan "Workers of all countries unite" from before the First World War. It didn't work then, and I am afraid it won't work now.

The film reminded me very much of "Le Havre" (2011, Aki Kaurismâki). Did the excess of idealism of this film irritate me also? I don't remember exactly, it is a long time ago, but I don't think so. The films of Aki Kaurisämik have more of a fairy-tale nature than those of Ken Loach.