The Old Oak: dir Ken Loach (2023)

Sometimes Ken Loach films can seem a bit of a constant battering of messages about social incohesion and unfairness. At their best, though, they are suffused with empathy and idealism along with the anger and the black-and-white morality; and The Old Oak is one of those. The Oak itself is a rundown pub, metaphorically and actually the centre of passes for community in a cash-strapped corner of the north-east of England that has been suffering a slow, painful decline since the coalmine closures of the 1980s. The arrival of a group of Syrian refugees provides a flashpoint for xenophobic tensions, but The Old Oak’s landlord strikes up an unlikely friendship with a young female refugee. They find similarities in their situation and come up with a plan to bring the two traumatised communities together … There’s a plea for open-hearted compassion and a message of hope and solidarity in a film which starts so bleakly as a comment on modern Britain. As the Guardian put it, “Ken Loach could hardly have delivered a more resonant, timely or indeed angry swansong than this feature which takes up arms against the decay of national compassion and makes a statement of faith in compassion for the oppressed.”. Recommended.