Critical notes

Political activism, as a humanistic and social value portrayed in Cinema, facilitates a concrete dialogue with reality: This is what Ken Loach has built through his relationship with the productive and creative space that filming offers by enabling this idea of engagement and commitment—which has literally occupied his thinking and filmmaking from the very beginning. This has made him an almost unique filmmaker for his ability, pursued over the years, to bring to the broadest levels of the international scene a poetic approach centered on solid political issues coupled with a relevant social analysis, capable of drawing a large audience into a narrative that transitions from sympathy for strong, characterized protagonists to empathy for the issues they face and the dramas they consequently live through. Starting with the lessons learned from the era of Free Cinema in England, which he adopted in a completely personal way—more inclined to shorten emotional distances within the human scene in which he moves—Ken Loach came to cinema with the existential tools suitable for working from the ground up, hence constructing narrative parables capable of telling the truth about life. As the son of blue-collar workers, raised in a family that over the war years experienced displacement, he knows what it means to survive from day to day and seeks not to ever forget it. His early creative phase focused on the narratives of 1960s British television (The Wednesday Play), which was pioneering in its social documentary approach. These were already stories of young people, families, workers, and the homeless, which then transitioned into the formidable cinematic debut trilogy (Poor Cow, Kes, and Family Life) with which Loach entered the 1970s; he remained mostly connected to producer Tony Garnett, with whom he founded his first production company. The flagrancy of everyday life along with the conflicting value of family relationships are already at the focus of a narrative that finds its true strength in giving attention to an evocative background with its own issues. Personal dramas are the result of a clear and empathetic, never jarring, depiction of social relations; this offers Ken Loach’s cinema an extraordinary connection towards the audience, who in fact from the very beginning follows him with an attentive participation.

Massimo Causo

credit photo Paul Crowther

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