His slow walk, his meticulous speech and his fragile appearance, in keeping with his 87 years, are misleading. When talking, sparks shine in Ken Loach’s eyes. The Englishman, double winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes, eternal believer in a left closer to the people on the street than his leading theorists. Loach has been a key filmmaker in European cinema for decades, loved by many audiences, including those from Valladolid, given the mass reception received by the director at the Seminci, where he competes with The old oak before its commercial release on November 17. Since his second album, Kes (1969), which already competed at the Seminci, Loach develops a militant cinema that continues to highlight social inequalities throughout the decades in which the world has moved forward without listening to artists like him. “Look, that’s why festivals are important, because the heart of cinema as a culture is protected here. Outside, commercial films have crushed the rest of the films, forgetting that the medium is more important than the industry,” he said yesterday Friday in his talk with EL PAÍS.
Next to him sits Paul Laverty, the screenwriter with whom Loach has collaborated on 16 films. They make a curious duo: Laverty speaks with his strong Scottish accent and at full speed; English in a sweeter way. However, they agree on the message, and that is why the director does all the promotions with Laverty (also a regular scriptwriter for Icíar Bollaín, his partner) by his side. Today, the one who starts to speak is the veteran, because he considers that with The old oak closes a trilogy “in which we have precisely examined how current society is functioning” together with I, Daniel Blake and Sorry We Miss You.
The title comes from the name of a pub, the only one open in a town on the outskirts of Durham, in the northeast of England, an old mining land now sunk in an endless crisis. A group of Syrians arrive there, transferred by the Government. As one local points out: “You won’t see poor refugees in Chelsea.” The clash is inevitable, and phrases like “our people first” or “hope is obscene” are heard on the screen. “We wanted to be very precise with the stories to explain this process of growth of racism, exploitation, how In a free world… [2017]. But I think that in this trilogy we have gone further, we have delved into a society that uses anger as a weapon, that has found a way to increase the exploitation of workers and precarious work. And therefore, these people are vulnerable to the influence of the extreme right, to the flames of racism. Our response must be solidarity.”
Loach is committed to a hope based on that solidarity. Does that make you optimistic or pessimistic? “Realistic. Due to the situation we are experiencing, that is the way to follow. And on that path we have to recognize that we need each other, that there is interdependence, call it solidarity, and that is the rock from which we can make progress, right?” With the ending in question, he gives the ball—both are very football fans—to Laverty. “We recently spoke with an Oxford professor, Danny Dorling, and we attended a conference in which, with the rigor that characterizes someone from Oxford, he had analyzed the current statistical data and assured that this is the greatest crisis in living standards since 1798 and the Napoleonic wars, and he applied it in the United Kingdom and in many other countries in Europe. In our country, only food banks and weapons sales have grown. Everything else has sunk. For us, the most tragic thing is that the Labor party continues to move to the right without addressing people’s problems. Instead of going, for example, to the Durham miners’ gala, where we filmed and where he was invited, the party leader, Keir Starmer, preferred to meet with Murdoch.
For Laverty, the great fear is that if the left does not face the problems, “the extreme right will do so by proposing simplistic solutions, and they will use all that anger to their advantage. And people’s anger is often born from legitimate reasons.” Because there is the seed of The old oak tree: analyze how in a community impoverished by the closure of the mines and the galloping crisis of the 21st century, people who united in the fight against the bosses, racism can emerge and grow. “Do we let them, or countries like Spain, Italy or Greece, bear the burden of immigration, or do we prepare a plan that works for all of Europe? We have to be rational, look at the problems, look for solutions. If corporations are the ones who dictate our steps, when they only think about their profits, who will solve our problems?
Loach nods next to him: “I was born the year of Franco’s coup d’état and the coming to power of fascism. I grew up in World War II. And keeping in mind the pain and death of the Nazi death camps, the extreme right in Europe has never been as scary as today. That poverty, that anger, that inequality is too similar to that experienced in the 1920s and 1930s. Look how we ended up following those who proposed simplistic solutions.”
Furthermore, the war between Israel and Hamas enters the conversation. “Our great hope is UN Secretary General António Guterres, who condemned the Hamas atrocity of October 7 and also what is happening in Gaza, which includes the murder of thousands of people, including also thousands of children. And Guterres stressed that there is a context to understand the facts, that he could not sit down and say anything without knowing and clarifying the past, the 56 years of suffocating occupation that the Palestinians have suffered,” Loach explains. “Ken and I,” recalls Laverty, “were involved eight years ago in The Russell Tribunal in Palestine, which relied on experts on the ground analyzing the situation. And I remember very well how they warned us that the rhetoric of genocide is very dangerous, today it is precisely those who use that rhetoric who govern. What world do we live in that condemns anyone who tries to understand something? Guterres tries, and has been attacked. Breaking international law like Israel does is super dangerous.” Loach ends: “We only have the UN left. Because if not, we will reach mutual destruction. Humanity must respond collectively to that problem and others such as climate change. And I insist: do not allow human rights to be destroyed, as has been done with Israeli settlements on Palestinian land. It is illegal, we cannot allow international law to be ignored.”
There is another film by Loach that connects with the need for solidarity and equality that he defends The old oak tree: it’s the documentary The spirit of ’45, which illustrates a moment, at the end of the Second World War, when in the United Kingdom it seemed that the triumph of social justice was going to be achieved. “It was a moment of reconstruction, in which the idea that poverty had to be left behind took root in all Britons, and that public services would serve that purpose, and that capitalism had to develop in a fair balance. It was a physical reconstruction, of great works, and collective. But there were those who wanted to and were able to put an end to it. Today we need a new left, someone who cares for human beings, and a European Union that abandons bureaucracy and truly moves forward supporting real democracy.”
The last part of the talk has to do with their teamwork and what the future holds. Laverty explains that they do it very organically. “We talk a lot, we are close friends, so an idea comes out of any spark. We also waste time, if you want to call it that, chatting about football, joking. In short, we search, we investigate, we create connections,” explains the screenwriter, who lives in Edinburgh, while Loach resides in Bath, England. “I don’t understand cinema as something individual. In our films, of course, there are more people, like producer Rebecca O’Brien, and I consider them collective works.” And are they with a new script? “There are always things on our mind, although I also know that we need time to think, to investigate,” says the director, and his gesture adds a subconscious “we’ll see” to the phrase.
All the culture that goes with you awaits you here.
Subscribe
Babelia
The literary news analyzed by the best critics in our weekly newsletter
RECEIVE IT
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
_
#Ken #Loach #extreme #Europe #scary #today