In what may well be his last feature film – he’s 87 now – it’s another passionate, committed look at the state of Britain. It’s his third feature in a row set in the poverty-stricken northeast, following the Cannes-winning I, Daniel Blake (2016) and Sorry We Missed You (2019).
This time, the story centres on the eponymous pub, a rundown watering hole owned by the downtrodden TJ Ballantyne (Dave Turner). With the locals nearly all in dire circumstances, discontent stirs when a group of Syrian refugees are shipped into the area by the government.
Meeting FilmInk during the Cannes Film Festival, among other things, Loach addressed whether The Old Oak will indeed be his swansong. If it is, he’ll be sorely missed.
Your writer Paul Laverty [with Loach below] called The Old Oak, your third consecutive film in the northeast, “unfinished business”. Do you agree?
“Yes, absolutely. A whole number of reasons. Our thread through all the things Paul and I have done has been work and how work has changed; from security to insecurity, loss of trade union power, and how inevitable that has been through the demands of capitalism. The demand ever more for exploitation of labour. One big corporation will find a way of reducing their labour costs, the others will follow suit. They’re in competition. So, there’s a constant pressure to increase the exploitation of labour. That means insecurity at work. It means the end of the eight-hour day. It means the end of the sustainable wage. It means the end of security. Not only that, but there are whole areas where old industries are gone. And of course, the market cannot plan. The government could plan, we could plan to invest in new industries, but the market won’t plan. So, if they can’t make money out of that area, it stays neglected, and that’s what happened in this old coal mining area. So again, it’s another symptom of the chaos and the indifference of the market. It has to be indifferent to the needs of the people.”
Have you seen this across the northeast region where you filmed The Old Oak?
“In these old coal mining areas, everything has gone. Work has gone, people have gone, public spaces have gone, schools have closed, churches have closed. So, you’re just left with very little. Houses that are empty and falling apart and so on. And into this comes refugees, also with nothing. So, [we have] the illegal war in Iraq for oil to control the area; the war in Afghanistan, supporting the Taliban, in order to oppose Russia; and now we’re left fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. The constant intervention by western countries for their own ends causes chaos. People are left with a need to leave their countries for their own safety and then we say, ‘Oh go away, it’s nothing to do with us’.”
How did the idea of including the Syrians refugees come about?
“Well, it was what we talked about. Paul wrote the story; he had read the first story of the Syrians arriving in the northeast. So, it began with Paul and then we talked about it and what ideas we would explore through the collision of the two communities. We thought, ‘We can try to touch some of those deeper points’.”
Do you see the film as a cry for community?
“It’s in the people, you see… there is the old miners’ tradition of solidarity. When you’re in trouble, we all eat together. It’s very much ‘we support each other’ and there’s a strength in that. So, that other tradition is very positive. Once they get to see each other, they sit alongside each other and laugh. That’s the hope in the film. We have that within us. ‘You’re in trouble, I’ll give you a hand. I’m in trouble, you’ll pull me up’. That’s waiting to be expressed. It’s what we hope.”
How did you set about shooting the scenes where they’re all eating together?
“It all happened very quickly. Kids, once they’ve eaten, they’ve eaten. We just set it up. ‘OK, here’s the meal’. The kids came in, we had two cameras. You just find the moment. You put people in the right positions and make certain you will get good shots. It was all shot between twelve o’clock and two o’clock, as once they’ve eaten, they want to go out and play! There’s a time limit on it! And I think often you allow people just to experience something as real as you can, and you’ve got the right people and then they just enjoy it. Fergus [Clegg], the designer… they do the food side of it, and he said, ‘We must get some good food. Something green and wholesome’. When we asked, they just wanted chips, chicken nuggets – the nearest you could get to fast food. So, in the end we had to provide that. Otherwise, it was pushed away.”
How was it working with the Syrian actors? Did they share stories?
“The Syrians had been through such horrors, horrors, horrors. All the men had been tortured. We sat and listened to them one day and it’s just unbelievable. One woman had the most appalling story – the woman had lost her legs. Lost her children, lost her husband, lost everything. It was a devastating story. We recorded it in the film, but we realised that if we heard that story, in a way you couldn’t watch the rest of the film, because it was so overwhelming. And you’d think, ‘Why aren’t we telling that story?’ In the end, we couldn’t include it, as you’d have to leave the cinema to absorb that – it was too much. They were extraordinary people.”
How do you look back on your long career now?
“Oh, it’s huge luck, huge luck. Always working with a great team of friends. There’s a saying in English – it’s a football saying. There is no ‘i’ in team. You’re part of a group. Directors get credit for other people’s work often and the blame sometimes as well. But it’s maybe looking back at friendships and good fortune and respect and admiration for people who are really in the frontline. It’s a lot easier to make a film than actually be in the frontline. We’ve been very lucky to be honest.”
How difficult is it to keep fighting?
“Well, I mean, I’m hugely fortunate. I mean, it’s a great privilege really. It began in the ’60s with good fortune in being involved in that TV group at the BBC, the group of producers and writers and others who were given the freedom of the airwaves, basically, peak time on a Wednesday after the news – an hour and a quarter, hour and a half, for a piece of contemporary fiction. We were able to make one or two that hit the headlines. And that became a calling card.”
But you also had a wilderness period. How do you look back on that?
“In the ’70s, we did television. I did Kes in ’69. So, I was lucky with meeting Barry Hines again through the producer Tony Garnett. I did Kes and then did TV in the ’70s. And then I was just emerging out of that… did another film with Barry Hines, a couple with Barry. And then Thatcher came. Tried to make documentaries, most of them got banned. So, the ’80s was a really dark period. And I just came out of it, towards the end of the ’80s, when amazingly, David Putnam was running Columbia Pictures. And he asked me if I’d like to do a film [Hidden Agenda] about the Stalker inquiry. The British state was accused of shooting Irish Republicans in the north dead instead of arresting them and putting them on trial. Shoot to kill it was called. It was a film about that. And Jim Allen wrote it. David left Columbia. But we managed to raise the money. And I was back doing a feature film and it went to Cannes and was quite well received there. And then did another one straight afterwards that also went to Cannes. Suddenly, I was back on making feature films.”
Will you make another feature or is The Old Oak your final film?
“I can’t see getting around the course again. It’s quite demanding. I mean, we only shoot for six weeks. But it’s keeping the emotional energy going. I mean, physically, staying on my feet is no problem. And also, I’ve only got half of one eye left. So just the normal things you do… then you get really old, they just get harder to deal with. I think it’s going to be difficult. Maybe a little documentary. I’d love to do another feature. I mean, who wouldn’t?”
What would you do if you retire?
“I’ll go and see more cricket, I guess. Cut the grass. In fact, it’s often easier when you’re making a film. There’s so many campaigns and organisations to support. We came [to Cannes] yesterday and some very good people came from Marseille – a movement in France. They came over to say hello, so we spend a good hour talking to them. The movement against Macron.”
The Old Oak is in cinemas from 30 November 2023
