THE OLD OAK begins with images reminiscent of Germany in 2015. The inhabitants of a British coastal town insult a coach with Syrian women and children in it. Some volunteers from the area make sure that the new arrivals enter their assigned apartments safely. One of them is Thomas Hoe Ballantyne (Dave Turner), or TJ, the owner of “The Old Oak,“ the last pub in a former mining village in Durham. In the evening, his regulars let out their resentments and TJ doesn’t say anything about it, he can’t afford to lose the last paying customers. But when he gets closer to young Yara (Ebla Mari) and finds out more about the Syrian families, he decides to make the back room of the bar available as a meeting room to eat together, he finds himself in the firing line. Ken Loach and his long-time screenwriter Paul Laverty don’t have any sympathy for the short-sighted racism of the locals, but they do have sympathy for their precarious situation. When volunteer Laura gives a Syrian girl a bike, a neighborhood boy asks whether he can have one too. “They get everything thrown at them,“ he adds, already using the rhetoric of the adults. The shared dinners add a new dynamic to the messy situation, especially because they remind the villagers of times with more solidarity when the mining families stuck together. Loach’s analysis is clear: sticking together is a must, and it can come from the inhabitants who remember their class and show solidarity. The film spells it out in a blatantly obvious way, but his belief in a better future isn’t less moving because of it.

Hendrike Bake

Translation: Elinor Lewy