I got into university, and even started eating dinners at Gray’s Inn in order to take the bar exams and qualify, but then thought ‘this is not for me’. “I quite fancied the law, having no lawyer friends or relatives, but having read the biographies of the Edwardian barristers and advocates Marshall Hall and Norman Birkett, and thought ‘ah, that’s the life for me’.
He reached the age of 86 during the filming which led to the choir in Durham Cathedral singing an impromptu ‘Happy Birthday to You’ in mid-shoot, to his embarrassment and to the affectionate entertainment of cast and crew.Ī career in film was not his original plan, he explains when we meet in his tiny Soho office earlier this year as the editing nears completion. If it’s nearly last orders in the pub it is also a last film for Loach, one of Britain’s most prolific and most political of directors. House rules: Fighting, drugs, wilful damage to property: minimum one year ban. A notice on the wall from its real past which has been retained for the shoot catches the eye: ‘Welcome. The pub in the former pit town of Murton near Durham that has been transformed into the Old Oak used to be called The Victoria. Some locals object, not wanting any “fucking ragheads” to be “dumped on us”. Into town comes a group of Syrian refugees to be rehoused, including a self-confident young woman, Yara (played by the Syrian actor Ebla Mari) who likes taking photos of what she encounters. There is still a pub, the eponymous Old Oak, run by a former miner, TJ Ballantyne, played by Dave Turner, but it is on its last legs, kept afloat by a ragbag of disgruntled and opinionated regulars. Shops are boarded up, money is scarce, divisions over the 1984 miners’ strike linger. The story is set in an anonymous former mining town decades after the pit closures. Ken Loach and his old compadres, writer Paul Laverty and producer Rebecca O’Brien, could not have chosen a more pertinent time for shooting their latest film, The Old Oak, which premieres at the Cannes film festival this month. I t’s June 2022, a week of rail workers’ strikes are under way and refugees are in the news whether arriving from Ukraine or via boats across the channel despite the threat of transportation to Rwanda.
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