A decade ago, when Ken Loach was shooting his period drama Jimmy’s Hall in the northwest of Ireland, rumours spread that it would be the last film he’d ever make. The left-wing filmmaker behind Kes, Raining Stones and Riff-Raff, movies that defined the British working-class experience with humour and heart, was in his late seventies. Retirement wouldn’t be unexpected, and Loach did little to extinguish the notion. “Well, I was sinking in an Irish bog at the time,” the 87-year-old reflects today, cutting a studious-looking figure in his glasses and navy jacket. “Why am I, a man of mature years, losing my shoes in an Irish bog?”
After Jimmy’s Hall, though, Loach found his footwear again, so to speak. He followed it up in 2016 with I, Daniel Blake, a blistering look at the cruel and byzantine UK benefits system and the boom in food banks. It won him a second Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival (following 2006’s The Wind That Shakes the Barley), putting him in a very rarefied group of directors. Then came 2019’s Sorry We Missed You, a heart-wrenching swipe at Britain’s gig economy. Now, with The Old Oak, he’s completed an unofficial trilogy of sorts. And this one may actually be his last film.
