The Old Oak (2023)

Director: Ken Loach

I have been spending my free time on music lately, such that I am exhausted by nighttime when I pop in a film. The Old Oak has been staring at me for a few weeks now, and no one is requesting it from the library where I borrowed it. Why did I want to watch a movie about a forgotten pub in northern England? Wasn’t there a movie or two about old bookstores that close and re-open? Yawn.

The Old Oak was by 88-year-old Director, Ken Loach. He claims it is his last film. I felt compelled to see it and will look up some of his older movies now (i.e., I liked The Old Oak!).

I watched it in spurts as it’s quite the slow burn. It really grew on me and I didn’t want to miss anything.

My take is that this is a film about an unexpected friendship, a forgotten part of England where the unlucky are born into, and few find their way out. A constant way of living and thinking, unwilling to change. Bleak moments of despair countered by, thank goodness, uplifting and tear-inducing moments from this Viewer.

The film takes place in a former mining village in northeast England in 2016. Cold, grey, bleak. A busload of Syrian immigrants is dropped off in the middle of a neighborhood by a non-profit group, met by jeers, pejoratives, and aggressive behavior by the locals. One young Syrian gal (later called a “pet”!!! in the lovely townie English for which I had to turn on the subtitles) speaks the best English out of the lot and takes photos of this activity. A local bully grabs the camera and smashes it.

The owner of the local pub, The Old Oak, drove the van that has delivered the Syrians. He, himself, is depressed and has experienced much loss, surrounded daily by the pub-going locals who drink and lament about the “immigrants ruining the community” in his establishment. A friendship emerges between him and the shaken Syrian girl who lost her camera.

A poignant scene hit me when the non-profit delivered a beat up bike from the thrift shop to a Syrian girl as 3 young local lads looked on with envy. “We’ve been wanting bikes too”. The locals are hardly better off and it’s easy enough to understand the pub owner being torn between the continuing xenophobic beliefs of his patrons, and the tugging of his heart to help the immigrants.

There were some moments when it felt a little fake and contrived. The Syrian gal is verbally abused by the mother of a local teen she helped after almost fainting due to lack of food at home. Later, the same mother befriends her and asks her to do a photo shoot at the local hair salon. Deep-rooted racism turns that quickly? There were also some undeveloped moments where I wanted to see more (spoiler: the pub owner’s dog getting mauled. How did that all happen in the blink of an eye? How did the bigger dogs come out of nowhere?).

Regardless, it was a very satisfying film to me. I learned a lot about northern England, “the pits” (mining) – when the old town was prosperous, the strikes, the language, the life (not too much to it: spending the money that you have on “the drink”, maybe go to school, maybe skip school). But the slow bond between the local community and the incoming community is made slowly but surely, and mostly over food (Lord knows Syrian food tastes WAYYYYyyyyy better than English food). Does this happen in reality? Even in my own community, and likely everywhere, there are many, many opinions, both positive and negative, on immigration.

What Did I Love Most About This Movie? I loved the lingo. “Pet” for gal, maybe a young gal (?); “Bairn” for kid. The way the old men in the pub just fired off the F word in normal convo. It was so interesting to read the subtitles and get the flavor for the linguistics of this region. I would have missed so much if I didn’t have the subtitles on. I also liked the long black screen in between each transition, like, is it over, what’s next. It gave my mind a bit of time to adjust to the next scene. The piano score was lovely and perfect for the movie too. A nicely done and contemplative film whose backdrop could have been transferrable to anywhere.

Where Did I Watch This Movie? I got it on DVD from my local library, but noticed that it was available on Kanopy too.