Before the Cannes Film Festival, where it made its debut, Ken Loach announced that The Old Oak is to be his final work. This is a shame because we need someone with Loach’s righteous fury to make films about the deplorable treatment of Britain’s often invisible and maligned underclass. He might not be bowing out with a masterpiece, but it is still classic Loach.
The film takes place in the Northeast of England. The year is 2016 – for many, one of the worst years of the millennium, the deaths of David Bowie and George Michael bookending the death of the European dream and the horror show that was Brexit; a pivotal moment that saw an immediately escalation of race-related hate crimes.
