Ken Loach - rattle of a singular man

[DB7]

Ken Loach - rattle of a singular man

by james christopher
Ken Loach continues to plough his lonely furrow of social realism. Except that it's back in vogue



THERE’S SOMETHING of the ghost about Ken Loach. He has long been a director who is easier to respect than enjoy. In terms of resident glamour, his is the last council house on Stella Street. His films seem stuck in another era, and picky locals frequently have a pop at him for never “moving on”. Yet Loach has never looked more pink and alive.
Terrific reviews of his last two films, My Name is Joe and the Cannes Festival toast Sweet Sixteen, have pumped Viagra into a flagging career.



Ae Fond Kiss, the title of a Rabbie Burns catch, is the third part of a trilogy exploring contemporary life on the west coast of Scotland, and again it is written by Loach’s long-standing collaborator, Paul Laverty. The film charts the relationship between a Catholic teacher, Roisin (Eva Birthistle), and a Muslim graduate, Casim (Atta Yaqub), and it’s born of the racial freeze that has descended on the ethnic communities of Glasgow since “the war on terrorism” was openly declared.

The result, says the shy and freckly writer, is “a story about the fetters in people’s minds”. I’m struck by this comment because Loach doesn’t seem entirely unfettered himself. I’m destined to meet the director in a makeshift canteen in Glasgow, where the crew for Ae Fond Kiss has pitched base camp. I’m more than slightly nervous. Loach works in mysterious ways. His film sets are closed shops. Journalists are rarely granted an audience. And the director is never less than elusive about the film turning in his head.

In the flesh, he is surprisingly kindly, and extremely polite. Furious too, when he discovers that I’ve got hold of a script through the press office. He nearly drops the lunch plate perched on his lap. “How stupid of them!” he groans, attacking his peas. “I’m appalled. Heads will roll. I wouldn’t send anyone a script. You never know how this film might turn out.”

It’s not the idle gripe of a control freak. Loach famously refuses to tell his actors where their characters are going, how the story develops or what happens in the end. He likes his actors to work blind, because he needs spontaneity to feed his visions. Pages of dialogue are used as sparingly as fish bait, and handed out on a need-to-know daily basis. He is terrified that I’m going to spill the plot to his ever-curious leads, and makes me swear not to reveal a word. Allaying the fears of the Muslim cast was hard enough.

“They had to be Glaswegian and Pakistani. If they were one or the other, you would lose half the point,” says Loach. “And being Glaswegian is not something the Muslim community embrace wholeheartedly.” There was also considerable anxiety in the Muslim community about the film’s motives.

“You understand the concern when you hear the insults and read about women having their headscarves pulled off in the street,” says Loach. “There would be an absolute outcry if it happened to a nun.”

In fact, Laverty’s script is commendably even-handed about ethnic mindsets. There are no easy rides for Catholics, Glaswegians or Muslims. “The interesting thing you find when you cut through the politics and external disparities is that the battles are the same within every family, whatever the costume or creed. I find that reassuring really,” says Loach.

After lunch, we are whisked to a neat Catholic day school in a quiet suburb to shoot a chase scene. Inside, there’s an air of ambling chaos.

One of the child extras has turned up with the wrong top, and a location manager is frantically trying to persuade his mother to extract the garment from a washing machine. “A firing-squad offence,” jokes Loach as he wanders off towards the school gymnasium.

The lead actress, Eva Birthistle, is upstairs in the music room practising piano scales. “I’ve never worked like this before,” says the lithe young Irish actress. “It’s strange not knowing what’s going to happen to your character from one day to the next. If it was any other director, I would have said ‘No way’. But because it’s Ken Loach you suspend those fears. The nice thing is that you don’t have too much time to panic, and you’re encouraged to improvise.”

It’s this fierce documentary commitment to performance that is the hallmark of Loach’s career. Mike Leigh has a similar belief in the supremacy of the actor, which is why these two Old Labour stalwarts are so frequently confused. Leigh is thanked by strangers for directing Kes, and Loach is hailed for making Abigail’s Party. Apparently they’ve both learned to enjoy this tooth-grinding faux pas, though I suspect it took years. The difference between the two directors, and the way they handle their actors, could not be more marked.

While Leigh workshops his actors to death to heighten his situation dramas, Loach stands back and asks them to make it look as if it’s really happening. On set, Loach cuts an almost paternal figure with his large square glasses, jeans and Barbour jacket. He shepherds his actors with the tireless enthusiasm of a Butlin’s Redcoat, and his instructions are precise and uncomplicated. No one seems fussed by the endless retakes.

Ray Beckett, an engineer, has worked with Loach since Raining Stones in 1993. “He won’t leave a scene until he gets as much out of it as he can,” says Beckett. “Sometimes he just lets the cameras roll on and on after a take without telling anyone. He gets some really interesting footage from that. His work is like an extension of documentary film-making rather than drama. With a Merchant Ivory drama (Beckett worked on three during the 1980s) you know at the beginning of the day more or less what methods you’re going to use to get through it. A Loach film requires flexibility of thinking on the part of everyone.”

Fergus Clegg, the art director, and another long-time collaborator (this is his eighth Loach film), is fresh from the set of Thunderbirds. “This is what film-making is all about,” he says, throwing an arm towards the grey school foyer. “It’s much more interesting, and a lot more honest than Hollywood. A Loach film is not a dream factory, it’s real life, which the medium, and media, seem less and less interested in. Many people prefer the McDonald’s attitude to film. Ken has a lot more integrity. He deals with issues which aren’t always popular, and because he’s one of the rare directors who shoots in sequence, you experience the story as it unfolds. There is spontaneity and surprise.”

Shock too. When Loach filmed Land and Freedom, about the Civil War in Spain, the dynamics of the film changed as members of a close-knit cast were dramatically killed off. “No one had the slightest inkling what would happen next,” says Clegg, “which created remarkable tensions and incredible set chemistry.”

It all seems a far cry from the chase scene Loach is trying to bend into shape in a school corridor in Glasgow. A bunch of swearing kids are being chased by a fat caretaker and an apoplectic schoolteacher.

There seems precious little to direct. Shots like this were two a penny during the glory days of Grange Hill. Two hours later, and Loach is still test-driving the fleeting point.

What ineluctable truth, I wonder, is the maestro trying to nail? The kids are surreally unflapped by the endless takes. They’re having fun with the insults, and they’re effortlessly fit. The adult actors are puffing in the foyer like a couple of dray horses who’ve entered all six races at Epsom under the insane delusion that they might actually get placed.

Stamina is clearly the secret of making an unforced, naturalistic Loach movie. I’m thinking of nipping outside for a quick dram when Loach slopes over. “More gritty social realism,” he says with a wry, blue twinkle. He simply can’t get enough of it.

Four decades of true grit

Poor Cow (1967) Loneliness and low lifes

Kes (1969) Boy meets bird in this spirited but tragic classic

Family Life (1971) Teenage meltdown, documentary-style

The Gamekeeper (1980) One man and his game — a year in the life of . . .


Hidden Agenda (1990) Love, murder and Frances McDormand in Belfast

Riff-Raff (1990) Falling apart in the building trade

Ladybird Ladybird (1994) An “unfit” mother’s struggle with social services

Land and Freedom (1995) A Liverpudlian’s bid to join the Spanish Civil War

Carla’s Song (1996) Robert Carlyle falls for a Nicaraguan exile

My Name Is Joe (1998) Thirtysomething love in the Glasgow slums

Bread and Roses (2000) Unions, the sisterhood and Adrien Brody

Sweet Sixteen (2002) Doomed teenage dreams

[deckard]

For me it has to be "Kes",a truly wonderful film,Loach takes us through every emotion, so subtly done,but cutting into Northern realism and exposing such desparate lows and spiralling highs,whilst keeping an almost documentary feeling of continuity coupled with sweeping moments of grandeur.Superbly cast and acted by all,particularly David Bradley as the boy besotted by the Kestrel,a performance to melt anybody's heart.All this and a superbly honest and flowing script creats a pure 60's gem.