In a world where Hollywood’s high-budget superhero movies and epic fantasies attract huge audiences and eye-watering profits, Ken Loach stands apart. His relatively understated films authentically depict every-day life and its often-brutal social context. In doing so, he’s able to give a voice to the voiceless, start important conversations and achieve a powerful social impact.
In a career spanning more than half a century, Loach has achieved both prestigious awards and much-needed social change. But how has he been able to achieve both cinematic excellence and scathing social criticism? In this video, I want to explore Loach’s enduring principles that have allowed him to make films that are both beautiful and hard-hitting
Rejection of Hollywood
At first glance, the average Ken Loach film isn’t all that exciting. If I read you a premise such as “A man becomes a delivery driver to get out of debt”, you wouldn’t exactly jump at the prospect.
This is because each film is the antithesis of a typical Hollywood movie. There are no A-list celebrities, no big-name producers, and no sensationalised trailers. Instead, Loach insists on using new, inexperienced actors to tell everyday stories about ordinary people.
This approach to filmmaking has its roots in Loach’s early influences. Unlike many directors, he was never entranced by American cinema. Instead he found inspiration in Europe, among the Italian neo-realists.
Perhaps the most iconic film to come out of this genre, and one that heavily influenced Loach, is Vittorio de Sicca’s Bicycle Thieves. Set in Rome, the film follows a poor father who is desperately trying to provide for his young family. It offers a unique, and authentic portrayal of the poverty and unemployment endemic within post-war Roman society. In this harsh context, ordinary individuals such the film’s protagonist are effectively powerless. In the words of a New York Times reviewer; “It is the isolation and loneliness of the little man in this complex social world.”
Now, compare de Sica’s vision of Rome to the one provided by Hollywood around the same time, William Wyler’s Roman holiday. Here, A crown princess meets a reporter who takes her on a whistle-stop tour of the city. Driving around in a Vespa, the characters – played by A-list film stars Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn – go to various iconic landmarks such as the Spanish Steps, the Mouth of truth and the Colosseum. The film paints a romanticised vision of post-war Rome, where money is no object, and everything is possible. The ordinary man, desperately trying to make ends meet, is nowhere to be seen.
Whilst there is nothing wrong with Wyler’s approach, it may cause some misunderstandings. Audiences that only see Hollywood’s perspective on the world, where every character is exceptional and the person playing them is a film star, may forget that genuine social problems exist.
Meanwhile the neo-realists showed that film could be used to highlight social problems, and not just gloss over them.
Exposure of Social Issues
Just like neo-realistic influences, Ken Loach is just as concerned with individual characters as the social context that governs their lives.
Whilst the characters in each film aren’t real, the world they inhabit certainly is. It is through this lens, that loach can deliver a scathing social criticism, despite ultimately creating a work of fiction.
One of Loach’s first films, “Cathy, Come Home”, initially seems like your typical Hollywood romance. It follows a young woman called Cathy as she hitchhikes to the city, finds work and falls in love with Reg, the man of her dreams.
Yet, the budding romance soon takes a turn for the worse. Cathy becomes pregnant and Reg is injured at work, depriving the couple of any income and beginning a descent into poverty and then homelessness.
Instead of your usual romantic narrative that would blame a relationship breakdown on an individual problem such as an affair, Loach gives us a sobering reminder that a relationship can breakdown through factors that are beyond individual control. In this case, their plight is caused by housing policies that prevent struggling families from finding a home where they can all live together. Towards the end of the film, Cathy and her children are literally forced to separate from Reg as no men are allowed in the homeless shelter.
Here, we see that the social structure of housing policy is perhaps the most influential protagonist in the film, and this was not lost on the audience. The film’s broadcast was met with a public outcry, the formation of the homeless charity, Crisis, and the changing of rules so that homeless fathers could stay with their wives and children in hostels.
Yet, Loach’s campaigning didn’t stop there. Exactly 50 years after the broadcast of Cathy Come Home, Loach released I, Daniel Blake, an eerily similar film that also dealt with the structural causes of poverty.
This time, loach took aim at the Department for Work and Pensions and its cruel record of depriving disabled individuals their much-needed living costs. Instead of blaming the individual as so many have, the film shined a light on the failures of an uncaring welfare state. It showed how the insidious idea of the “un-deserving poor” was used to inflict more misery on those who had fallen on hard times through no fault of their own. Again, the most influential protagonist in this film was not Daniel Blake, but the system that failed him.
Commitment to Realism
Whenever a film like I, Daniel Blake is used in a political context you’ll often hear arguments pointing to how it is a merely a work of fiction. Which is fair enough. However, these stories are not created in a vacuum. Each film is heavily researched to the point that it is effectively an ethnographic study.
Therefore, it is no surprise that these stories often mirror reality. In my analysis of I, Daniel Blake, I recounted the tragic, real-life story of Stephen Smith, an individual who had come up against the same issues highlighted in the film and sadly died as a result.
Yet it’s not only Ken Loach’s stories that are grounded in reality, his whole approach as a director brings honesty and respect to incredibly difficult subjects. Instead of forcing his own style and perspective on his subject matter, he prefers to use only the most appropriate way of telling his stories.
This commitment to authenticity flows through to every facet of his films. For example, they are almost exclusively shot on location. Riff Raff, a film that documents the irony of a homeless construction worker, was filmed on a real building site instead of an artificial set.
Authenticity is also central to the process of choosing actors and actresses. Whilst it might seem that Loach’s rejection of well-known celebrity names means that he sets a low bar, the reality is quite the opposite. At the same time, Loach achieves realistic and genuine acting by filming chronologically and encouraging improvisation.
This commitment to realism means that his films must be taken seriously. They cannot be dismissed as purely fictional because the stories are based off real-life accounts. Equally, Loach’s understated style and commitment to authentic acting ensures that each depiction fairly reflects its source material.
Of-course some may argue that keeping things realistic doesn’t make for good cinema, but this is where many, including Loach would disagree. Realistic movies allow the audience to see themselves on screen.
Ken Loach is a director in a league of his own. For more than half a century, he has carried the torch for social realism; a genre that has produced some of the most powerful and important cinema of our times.
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