The Old Oak: The BRWC Review. By Samhith Ankam.
The dichotomy between good or bad doesn’t really blend in here, the binary dictates the action these characters will make — the racist patrons of the bar only grow to commit crimes. The complexity of Persian refugees coming into share the city with the locals is rendered through the painting of a city on fire, that is then getting painted over to save it.
It’s a thematic sledgehammer of “everyone is struggling” as a placeholder for moral ambiguity, which perhaps works to give some resolve to those folks who really need to hear this message of kindness, but otherwise it’s easy writing. Not enough to grasp upon.
Much of this is all traumatic detail in service of granting TJ, the owner of the local pub “The Old Oak” who soon turns into philanthropy, personal enlightenment through other people’s hopes. There’s a thread of empathy creates empathy, a world bonded by love — TJ helping Yara, one of the refugees who’s taken it upon herself to document her experience, repair her camera sets that course into motion.
But, it’s hard not to sense an ickiness in how use-and-throw the characters are in the narrative given how contextual their presence feels. Rarely are we afforded scenes in the refugees’ plight to assimilate, and developments of an entire community and TJ become so intertwined it can start to blend and blend into nothingness. Their spread of joy gets suffocated under TJ’s labored emotional state.
One scene regarding the state of Yara’s father runs with such life until it is reduced to an example of hope for TJ, if the term could be used in a decent sense it all then Yara exists as a manic pixie girl, only difference being that their relationship is entirely platonic.
I’m a newcomer to Ken Loach’s work, but there’s a tired didacticism that’s present in this being his self-proclaimed final work. It’s filled with scenes like children of the city peering their eyes on the bikes being handed out to the refugees, and men parading the local bar considering it to be a safe haven from those different to them.
The self-deprecation from TJ as his backstory unfolds gives this an edge that only highlights Loach’s interest in old folk instead of the new, leaving this feeling a bit bored even in good faith.
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