By JOSÉ GERALDO COUTO*
Commentary on Ken Loach's film, showing in cinemas
At 88 years old, the British Ken Loach, a reference in political-social engagement cinema, remains faithful to his humanist values in an increasingly inhumane world. Your new film, The last pub, which opens this Thursday, seeks to pick up the pieces of dreams shattered in recent decades and find reasons to maintain hope. It also helps to illuminate the historical process behind the recent extreme right-wing demonstrations in England.
The place where the story takes place is significant: a small town in the northeast of England that went into decline after the closure of the local coal mine. This depleted social environment, where middle-aged unemployed people drink beer at the bar, teenagers loiter aimlessly on the streets and women work miracles to feed their families, is shaken up by the sudden arrival of a wave of Syrian refugees, installed by social services in idle houses in the city.
Racism and xenophobia
As you would imagine, all the residents' resentment turns against the newcomers, in the form of racism and xenophobia. “When looking for someone to blame, we never look up, always down, to step on those who are more screwed than us”, summarizes TJ Ballantyne (Dave Turner), owner of the pub The Old Oak (The old oak), where the men of the community gather to drink and antagonize outsiders.
TJ is a kind of last bastion of proletarian consciousness and the values of international solidarity embedded in it. Not by chance, it is in him that the young Syrian Yara (Ebla Mari) finds support, who works as an informal leader and interpreter for the newcomers, as she is the only one among them who speaks fluent English. The rapprochement between the two allows Ken Loach to operate a “passing of the baton” between the workers’ struggle of the 20th century and the immigration drama of the 21st century.
The film grows, in my opinion, when this connection (of characters and themes) is expressed more visually than in verbal discourse, which sometimes slips into doctrinal didacticism.
The first sequence, even before the credits, is admirable: a succession of black and white photos document the arrival of refugees and the hostility of a bunch of local drunks, manifested in the dialogues in voice over. Photography, in fact, is a fundamental link between the two worlds: the photos of strikes and workers' demonstrations taken by TJ's father, a combative miner, dialogue with the snapshots of refugees captured by Yara.
Tributing to a social realism of a classic, almost documentary nature, which focuses on people who look like people (the protagonist is a former firefighter and rescue worker), Ken Loach allows himself few traces of audiovisual invention. Still, he manages to create scenes of great poetic power, such as TJ and Yara's visit to Durham Cathedral, built by the Normans almost a thousand years ago. “My father said that the cathedral did not belong to the Catholic Church, but to the workers who built it”, comments TJ. Yara, in turn, reflects bitterly on the destruction of ancient Roman buildings in Palmyra, Syria, by the Islamic State.
Paradox of hope
The last pub is, in a way, an essay on the persistence of hope in a world where everything seems to work against it. But hope itself contains an ambiguity. “Hope hurts, hope is heavy,” says Yara, repeating the sentiment expressed by Manuel Bandeira in “Rondó do Capitão” (“Heaviest weight/ it doesn’t exist”). However, the girl concludes, she is necessary to continue living.
Ken Loach's film is permeated by this contradiction, by this anguish. Perhaps that is why its tone is melancholic, almost elegiac, without the revolutionary flame of a Land and freedom (1995) nor the humor of a Looking for Eric (2009) or a The part of the angels (2012). From the dreams of revolutionizing the world, the motto that remains is that of solidarity among the humiliated of the earth. A harm reduction policy, or little more than that. At the age of 90, the old fighter is tired of war – but he doesn't seem willing to give up.
*Jose Geraldo Couto is a film critic. Author, among other books, of André Breton (Brasiliense).
Originally published on cinema blog [https://ims.com.br/blog-do-cinema/o-ultimo-pub-por-jose-geraldo-couto/] from Instituto Moreira Salles.
Reference
The Last Pub (The Old Oak)
United Kingdom, 2023, 113 minutes.
Director: Ken Loach.
Screenplay: Paul Laverty.
Director of Photography: Robbie Ryan
Cast: Dave Turner, Ebla Mari
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