Aubrey MaloneThe IFI hosts a Ken Loach retrospective
What lengths would you go to if you were poor and needed the money to buy your daughter a First Communion dress? Would you steal a sheep?
That's what Bruce Jones tries to do in the bittersweet Len Loach film Raining Stones, showing at the Irish Film Institute on May 25 as part of a Loach retrospective. Jones played the roguish Les Battersby for years in Coronation Street before his untimely exit. Here he's younger and more endearing in a film that has both pathos and humour in it. He plays a Manchester-Irish family man battling loan sharks and his own demons in his struggle to make ends meet.
Another rare Loach gem, Black Jack, is on view on May 11. This is set in the 18th Century and based on the children's adventure novel of the same name by Leon Garfield. The Gamekeeper (May 14) is also rare. It chronicles a year in the life of the eponymous gamekeeper as he raises pheasants, matters being complicated by the problems of predators and poachers.
Loach, of course, is better known for his socio-political works than these types of films. This is strongly in evidence in two documentaries, Which Side Are You On? andThe Save the Children Fund Film, which arebothshowing on May 17.
Period drama
Looks and Smiles, on the 18th, deals with an unemployed man in Sheffield looking to find direction in his life. This has a Northern Ireland theme as his friend is sent to Belfast as an army recruit to keep the Catholics down. So has Hidden Agenda, an engrossing thriller exposing political chicanery behind the killing of a human rights lawyer in Belfast.
On May 28 we have Ladybird, Ladybird, a docu-drama focussing on a British woman's fight with Social Services over the care of her children. The month ends on a high with a mouth-watering showing of Loach's latest work on the 30th.
This is Jimmy's Hall, a period drama dealing with the political activist Jimmy Gralton who was deported from Ireland during the so-called 'red scare' of the 1930s. Loach says this will be his last film. It's also being premiered at this year's Cannes film Festival.
The retrospective continues in June, where Loach's engrossing War of Independence/Civil War tale, The Wind That Shakes the Barley – arguably themost potentever filmmade about'The Troubles'– will be shown alongside another series of movies from his prolific back catalogue. You don't have to be a member of the IFI to attend these fims but they're cheaper if you are. You can see details on www.ifi.ie.kenloach.
I hope Jimmy's Hall isn't Loach's swansong as he's too important a film-maker to retire. At times his work has been overly propagandist in his concerns about poverty, homelessness, injustice and the impersonal nature of society but more often than not he has the happy knack of refusing to wear his social conscience on his sleeve as the convolutions of his sensitively directed dramas remove any possible charge of dull sloganeering.