A-Infos (en) Sicilia Libertaria 2-24: Cinema. The old oak (2023), by Ken Loach (ca, de, it, pt, tr) [machine translation]

The catechism of the spectacular commodity invades all means of 
communication... commercial cinema is harmful to those who make it and 
to those who subsume it as a cultural product, without having understood 
that impoverishing the language means abolishing the truth, propagating 
imbecility and contributing to establishment of the Empire of the pimps. 
The films of Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), Ridley 
Scott, Napoleon (2023) or Greta Gerwig, Barbie (2023) express the 
polarization of behaviors, emotions, beliefs that dismiss the meaning 
from the signifier and legitimize the asphalting of intelligence. Social 
consensus is a mirror-memory of political consensus and the vicious 
circle of a culture of prostration invades the personal sphere of 
consumers of illusions... anything that has some involvement with 
politics, finance, industry, knowledge, migrations, wars ... is 
conceived as subservience to the master of induced needs. Corruption, 
colonization, transformism, confession, subjection, fear, terror... flow 
back into propaganda, which is the executive arm of the "invisible" 
financial-political powers, the agent of single thought that re-proposes 
the stylistic features of dictatorial techniques.

In this sense, Italian cinema, the ugliest in the world, certainly the 
most imbecile, supported by the most servile criticism of the cinematic 
massif, has produced a mass of banalities built on ridicule, 
superficiality and childishness which have erected the song of 
subordination where the Neorealism had spread the degradation of state 
values. There's Still Tomorrow (2023) by Paola Cortellesi is the most 
shining example... the director wore the uniform of current politics and 
in the interludes of third-rate comedy she spilled the feminist 
revolution into the lie of obligatory optimism... a absolute falsehood! 
Let's imagine! When the interpretation of the offended life ends up on 
the benches of a government, every form of denial or rebellion disappears.

George Orwell's thought-crime is always current and there are masters of 
proletarian cinema, such as Ken Loach, who work to dismantle the 
dehumanization inherent in the apology of racial hatred... his artistic 
rhizome cracks the sophistries of power and strikes the blow of grace to 
all conversions attributable to profit sharing. The experts, the 
technicians, the producers of enthusiasm control everything, even the 
opposition... their dictionary is a protection network which, through 
the spectacularisation of goods, massacres, massacres, genocides, 
imposes its own rules. Crowds of Internet literates (marked, filed, 
classified, monitored, cataloged, monitored, punished) live the 
surrogate of freedom and become accomplices of murderers, criminals, 
dictators, tyrants in the cementation of reason.

Loach's resistance cinema is on the side of the last... the English 
director knows well that it is not with cinema that you can change the 
world, but at least restore the dignity of men and women where it has 
been trampled upon. With The old oak, Loach and his usual screenwriter, 
Paul Laverty, construct a film with "primitive" beauty, uprooted from 
cinematographic packaging that concerns the oligarchy of subservience to 
bureaucrats, financiers, technicians, advertisers, sociologists, 
psychologists, teachers, politicians, soldiers, priests, trade 
unionists... Loach and Laverty continue their journey as outlaws of 
inequality... they show that the fairy tales of democracies, 
totalitarianisms, financial empires prevent any social upheaval and are 
always the last, the exploited, the oppressed pay the price. The film 
closes the trilogy on marginalization that began with I, Daniel Blake 
(2016) and Sorry We Missed You (2019)... however, the pub sign falling 
to pieces does not indicate a defeat, but rather a stubborn and contrary 
direction capable of fighting against state injustice.

The old oak is the only pub open in a former mining town in England... 
TJ Ballantyne (Dave Turner) manages it with great difficulty... the 
customers are few, the people are impoverished, the houses are sold at 
auction for a few pounds and rented to Syrian refugees thrown into the 
country by the discriminatory policies of the British government... 
young and old come into conflict with the underprivileged Syrians, 
Ballantyne's friendship with the young photographer Yara (Ebla Mari), 
stirs up the racist discontent of the community and the The utopia of 
solidarity appears in a story that tells the story of humanity from the 
inside.

Ballantyne and Yara, with the help of the "Bedouins" and some citizens, 
clean up the room at the back of the pub (once used for parties, 
weddings, moments of convivial gatherings), dust off the photographs on 
the walls which recall the miners' struggles and through donations they 
offer hot meals to refugees and destitute English people... united in 
the slogan: "To eat together is to stick together". Loach and Laverty 
say that to change the state of things we must first modify the small 
daily gestures in the brotherhood of pain... utopia is one of the 
extreme ones, perhaps... however, like the donkey Benjamin in Animal 
Farm, Ballantyne and Yara represent the reality that cannot be seen, the 
dream of love between peoples that confiscates the dialectic of 
domination and shows that when men and women recognize themselves in the 
same desperation, all misery is swept away.

Loach's filmic framework is essential, spare, without complacency and 
Laverty's screenplay, supported by dry, true, profound dialogues, 
underlines endemic racisms and their overcoming. The photography by 
Robbie Ryan (he also collaborated with Loach on Angels Share, 2101; 
Jimmy's Hall - A Story of Love and Freedom, 2014; I, Daniel Blake), 
worked on browns, greens, reds, deposits the film in an almost 
documentary vision and there are many ethical-aesthetic moments in which 
emotional simplicity is transfigured into poetry. Jonathan Morris' 
editing is dry... it combines environment and characters in a sort of 
visual counterpoint that strengthens the film treatment. The acting 
skills of Dave Turner and Ebla Mari are minimal, based on crossed 
glances, figuration of bodies, silences that give voice to those who are 
repressed... contrary to what has been written about the dissonance and 
lack of nuances of the protagonists, their intimacy or a carnality of 
truth, is attested in the wonder of friendship... even George Fenton's 
music is woven into the narrative with love and contributes to the 
anti-literary or anti-marginal liveliness of the film.

The old oak is not only the undressing of a social drama, above all it 
is the invitation to fight against the idolatry of imposition, 
persuasion, racism in a tragic realism which in the floods of the 
neoliberal market finds moments of hope without revenge. Loach is not 
about a forgotten but outraged world, where individual redemption mixes 
with that of the community which opposes resignation. The redemption of 
the defeated cannot pass through the sermons of the institutions nor the 
racist fury of the impoverished populations... the sharing of exclusion 
turns into an act of disconnection from the racist discomfort and 
through fraternity it overflows into a new decency. "It doesn't matter 
where you come from but what you bring with you", we read in the film's 
poster... the authenticity of the film's structure is a fresco of social 
denunciation that rejects the oppression of saprophytic capitalism.

The old oak is a lesson in style not only on the wandering imposed by 
wars and the decadence of the working class... it is a cry of freedom 
against the xenophobic policies of party politics in Europe and in the 
four corners of the Earth... Loach's resistance cinema is inevitably 
political and contrasts the glories of entertainment cinema - which is 
the most political of all, as it educates ignorance of escapism from 
reality -... the large productions of the Hollywood industry and 
backyard filmographies (like Italian cinema), they pile the collective 
imagination onto the pillory of the dominant economic system and it is 
the works of defeatists like Loach that awaken consciences and indicate 
another vision of the world.

Come closer, take my love in which I buried yours and break it into 
pieces in the compassion of bloody innocence, said a drunkard friend of 
mine who knew Don Quixote by heart... cinema, in its infiniteness and 
unruliness, has also escaped the emptiness of formularies of 
admiration... there are films that reject the fate of impoverished 
peoples and invite us to raise our eyes against the idolatry of 
possession without ever lowering them again!... the smile of men in 
freedom is not where it bends to the commandment tables of oppression, 
but where it severs the chains of appearance and submission, and, 
sometimes, cuts the throats of the followers of the intolerable.

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
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