by Jaie Laplante, Executive Director & Director of Programming
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Director Ken Loach in 2006, with his Palme d’Or victory at Cannes Film Festival.
It may surprise you to learn that the filmmaker who has been invited the most times in the 68 years of the Official Competition at Cannes Film Festival is not French, American or Italian. That honor goes to 79-year-old British filmmaker Ken Loach, who has been invited a staggering 12 times, including for his most recent film, Jimmy’s Hall, which opens in Miami on July 24th. It is also the film that Loach has said will be his final narrative film (although he intends to continue making documentaries). The warm, lovely Jimmy’s Hall is a gentle summation of the themes, styles and concerns of a filmmaker that critic Guy Lodge has noted is “as famed for the no-nonsense naturalism of his aesthetic as for his defiantly socialist politics“.
Four out of Loach’s 12 Cannes Competition films have resulted in awards, including the big one – Palme d’Or – in 2006 for The Wind That Shook The Barley, his spectacle about the Irish War of Independence in the early 1920s. Loach returns to that same fertile territory with Jimmy’s Hall, set 10 years after the time covered in The Wind That Shook The Barley, a time when the agonies of the brutal Civil War (which followed Ireland’s victory) are just beginning to heal. But Ireland is still suffering from many inequalities; the working class have little work or work that pays very little, and the Depression in America has hampered the Irish economy.
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Still from Jimmy’s Hall.
For his final narrative hero, Loach picks up on the true-life story of James Gralton, who founded a community hall in Leitrim County for social dances, art and music classes, and access to an open meeting space for all. For Loach, the character of Gralton is perhaps the most thinly-veiled alter-ego of his entire filmography. Gralton’s a grand orchestrator of bringing the disenfranchised in from the cold; he’s quick to call out injustices; and he’s prone to fiery speeches about living for the joys of life, not simply surviving. (Loach has orchestrated the exact same concerns throughout his 25 feature films and dozens of other documentaries for TV.) However, the community hall greatly upset both the Catholic Church and the wealthy landowners, who saw in the hall a symbolic threat to their social dominance and class control.
Jimmy and his loyal friends fight them all, until the Irish Government elects to deport Jimmy to America without a trial, still the only Irish citizen in the new Republic’s nearly 100 year history to ever suffer that indignity. But Gralton’s legacy was the enduring gratitude of the people of the community where he was born, for whom he taught to dream, dance, love and laugh.
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Still from Jimmy’s Hall.
Jimmy’s Hall is the perfect summation to Loach’s 50 years of cumulative cinematic poetry, which has been built on the day-in, day-out struggles of both “kitchen sink realism” and lovely humanity of those who live with stoic determination in the face of quiet desperation. In a way, the Hall is a metaphor for Loach’s faith in Cinema all these years. It is the place where, through entertainment, confidence in the idea of the dignity of all human persons has been unassailably preserved. – Jaie Laplante
Jimmy’s Hall plays in Aventura and on Calle Ocho at MDC’s Tower Theater. SPECIAL BONUS at MDC’s Tower Theater only – for those who find the Irish accent harder to understand – the film will be shown with English subtitles (even though the film is in English). Get showtimes, see the trailer and purchase advance tickets here.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]
