The Old Oak

[johnr]

(Very mild spoilers)

Just been to see it. I've been a bit on-off with some of Loach's films over the years, but I think this one was perfectly pitched. Behind the 'simple/simplistic' framing and starkness was a multi-layered tale. I cried many times, both in hope and despair. I left with much more of the former than the latter, and whilst I have a bit of an aversion to many genres of storytelling in the way that one can be manipulated, I was taken along with it. I found the last section immensely powerful - there were some things that weren't coming back, but good things contiued - and hopeful. And fuck me, I need some hope these days.

It's worth a watch. For my occasional misgivings about his films, there's no one else like him.

[Antepli Ejderha]

I hope to get a chance to see this.

[ad hoc]

Ah there's a thread!

So to copy paste myself

We only have one cinema in town and it tends to show one film on Friday and one on Saturday (and that's it). Today's offering to my surprise was The Old Oak, which is a film which is about the least likely film I can imagine here (and arguably one of the most necessary). Perhaps unsurprisingly the audience was very small. I think approx 20.
Anyway I enjoyed it once I'd got past the slight jarring quality of it obviously being acted by non actors. If this is, as Loach suggests, his last film, it was in some ways quite fitting. Bleak with a soupcon of hope. Like life really.

(also good to note that Loach is not in that annoying group of long time supporters of Palestine who are also pro Assad)


Like you John I cried fairly often, especially in the first half