A Universal Tale, with a Glimmer of Hope

Some Comments on Ken Loach’s “The Old Oak”

By Mountain Shadow Director,
John Bennison

“When the oak is felled the whole forest echoes with its fall, but a hundred acorns are sown in silence by an unnoticed breeze.” - Thomas Carlyle 19th C. British historian, philosopher

A passenger bus dumps a horde of foreign-speaking immigrants on the streets of a working-class mining town that’s on the skids. The local inhabitants resent the invasion; along with the loss of their begotten way of life. Sound familiar? It’s a universal tale that British filmmaker, Ken Loach, draws upon to not only describe the well-worn dilemma of our post-moderrn world; but offers a glimpse of a hopeful way forward.

The 87-year old filmmaker has announced this is likely his last film; following several other similar films Mountain Shadow has previously brought our audiences. We showed “I Daniel Blake,” in 2017, and “Sorry We Missed You,” in 2020 (both available in our Member Lending Library). From the opening scene, displaying the pub owner trying in vain to prop up the sign to his local bar, “The Old Oak,” the cinematic metaphor develops in the relationship between two unlikely strangers, through a few simple acts of kindness.

There are some rough scenes, along with an over-abundance of foul language in this film. The filmmaker does not hold back in his authentic depiction of this sitz im leben (setting in life).

But in one scene, the young Syrian refugee wanders into an old Anglican gothic cathedral. While listening to the faint sounds of a children’s choir, she’s almost brought to tears. Then she finds the pub owner, sitting alone in an empty pew. Sitting down beside him, she sighs and shares her thoughts:

“My children will never see the temple in Tadmor. Palmyra. Built by the Romans, and destroyed by the Islamic State. When you have half of your country in rubble and you see this, it makes you want to cry. What will Syria be like in a thousand years? How many years to cut the stones ... to lift the weight, to imagine the light? How many brilliant minds? How much sweat? How many people working together? Such a beautiful place, makes me want to hope again. When they torture. When they target hospitals, when they murder doctors, when the world stands by and does nothing, that’s when the regime lives. When the world does nothing, that’s what they do to break us. It takes strength to hope, but they want to smash it. It takes faith to hope. We tried to build something new, something beautiful, and look at us. Thrown to the wolves. I have a friend who calls hope obscene. Maybe she’s right. But if I stop hoping, my heart will stop beating.”

A beautiful sentiment one might tend to believe is a bit too naive for this world. Still, the pub owner finds a simple way to renovate an “old oak,” to plant some seeds and feed some hungry hearts and make a feast of it. jb