This article first appeared in Counterpunch on March 1, 2024
Time To Plant An Acorn
by John Kendall Hawkins
The Old Oak is a new film by Ken Loach, who has now directed some 57 of them. The title refers to a standard issue pub (originally, The Victorian, renamed for the film), in County Durham, northeast England. Oak is not only symbolic of strength and endurance, but the pub represents the one place residents of an old mining town seeing downward trending times since Brexit can gather and drink a pint and think aloud and vent their considerable grievances against malignancies of fate and the indifferent state.
The film was written by Paul Laverty and stars Dave Turner as TJ Ballantyne, Ebla Mari as Yara, Trevor Fox as Charlie, and Claire Rodgerson as Laura. Turner previously starred in Loach's 2016 system-fighter film, I, Daniel Blake. Fox has starred in several Shakespearean productions and is a lead in the 2023 British TV series, Rain Dogs. Mari and Rodgerson are relative newcomers to film. The storyline of The Old Oak is straightforward:
The future for the last remaining pub, The Old Oak, in a village of Northeast England, where people are leaving the land as the mines are closed. Houses are cheap and available, thus making it an ideal location for Syrian refugees. [IMDB]
The village is indeed a bleak looking place to do time in. Bad things happen in such places. During my high school teaching internship, I lived for awhile in an old mill town where, not long after I arrived, a nutter dressed up like Jason (think horror movie) and chased, causght, and killed a girl before hanging himself. The girl's boyfriend was in my literature class and just stared vacantly ahead, spooking me, ordealing my humanity.
The old dilapidated pub reminded me of many a rough-and-tough unclean, unwell-lit places I frequented as an undergraduate philosophy major at university in Boston. One pub, in Dorchester, where I was living at the time, attracted because it offered fish-and-chips that brought a huge serving of haddock and french fries for a measly 5 bucks, which made no sense, until I realized the fish may have come from filthy Boston Harbor, and that haddock are bottom-feeding detritivores. I mean, the fish they served up were morbidly obese. For all I knew (know) they may have been fished off some landing near Southie's waste treatment facility. If Durham had an ocean nearby, that might have been what they served up.
But mostly it reminded me of a couple of pubs where I'd sat to drink me Kilkenny in Dublin, one summer after a year teaching English in Istanbul. One place, near where we (my future bride and I) bed-and-breakfasted, was so dark and dreary, and my presence so unwelcome to the grim-faced locals, who sat around in the near dark like Van Gogh's potato eaters, that I hurried with me ale and hoofed it out of there. Making sure I still had me wallet. That could have been The Old Oak. But a better fit came in troubled Derry (Londonderry, say the Protestant Orangemen), where all eyes seemed to be on me, relaxing only when the bartender spoke with me and it became clear I was an American -- from Boston -- and so, maybe a potential supplier of weapons against the hated Brits. At least that's how I remember it. And, really, when you think about it, what good is memory if it doesn't flatter? I sat there drinking, and thinking how I couldn't wait to get out of Ireland: we'd come into town after a visit to the Cliffs of Mohair, where I'd suffered a bout of amazing vertigo: I mean bonafide Hitchcockian stuff -- violins, whirlpools of the sordid mind. E.T. want to go home. Anether point? the barkeeper asked. I said, sure, why not? Make it a double.
Loach delivers an excellent working class vibe. The Old Oak could very well be a stage play, with the pub providing excellent drabbiness to complement the emptiness that has taken the town by storm. That and a massive exodus of miners, leaving behind cheap real estate, and thus, the opportunity for refugees and other migrants to come to town and move in. That's where the Syrian refugees come in.
Yara, and her family (her mom and sibs, minus the father who has been imprisoned in a Syrian prison), are new arrivals. They create local tension when Yara is out snapping photographs with her beloved camera. The locals don't like what they're seeing:
[woman] She's taking your f*cking photo!
[man] Taking my photo without my say-so? It's a f*cking disgrace, TJ!
[TJ Ballantyne] She's a bairn. Howay.
The newcomers are barely off the bus and already they are being accosted. The locals fear that what little value their property has remaining will be further depressed by the indigent newcomers unable to properly maintain the value of their digs, bringing everyone's value down. One character, Rocco, intentionally breaks Yara's camera. She refuses to accept this as her reality, and, after her family is settled in, she goes to TJ in The Old Oak, and asks him to assist her in identifying the person who broke her camera, so that she can seek reparations. This is essential opening tension. What will TJ do? He'll side with the girl, and, for a while, change his relationship to the town. He begins by promising to have the camera fixed.
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