Critic Reviews

It's as engrossing, thoughtful, heartfelt, angry, hopeful, and altogether valuable as his best work. If it is indeed Loach's farewell, it's one hell of a fine note to go out on.

If The Old Oak is indeed the last film of the master, it’s a fitting sendoff for a director whose work will continue to echo for at least as long as Durham Cathedral has been standing.

In place of magical thinking and a happy ending, The Old Oak serves up something harder: a meditation on hope.

Loach and Laverty fervently argue that through solidarity and a recognition of real interests, British people can naturally show empathy to immigrants and refugees.

An intimate but ambitiously mounted ensemble piece, The Old Oak ranks among Loach’s foremost state-of-the-nation dramas.

If this is the end of the road for a British filmmaking great, it’s a thoughtful, heart-filled finale. British cinema’s old oak still stands tall.

The third part in a loose, geographically defined trilogy, as sensitively penned by Loach collaborator Paul Laverty, The Old Oak is a gentler film than the stark austerity painted by I, Daniel Blake or the chilling dissection of the gig economy in Sorry We Missed You. The film is, however, astute in its depiction of a disenfranchised community, ravaged by vulture property speculators and post-industrialisation.

As things play out, however, Loach and Laverty are realistic enough in their tale of invigorating compassion to grasp that, as difficult as it is to find and nurture hope, just as essential is recognizing the danger lurking in festering grievance.

Although a lot of the film feels like a breathless box-ticking exercise designed to Include Every Pertinent Fact, the chemistry between Turner and Mari leads to a relationship rarely seen in cinema: a platonic friendship between an older man and a younger woman born of mutual respect.

If Ken Loach has always erred on making his political views impossible to misconstrue, he also knows how to keep his dramas from spiraling too far outside of plausibility.