Last day in Cannes: Ken Loach continues to fight for justice

The film critic usually spends the last day on the Croisette in a state of progressive exhaustion. It’s probably difficult to explain to outsiders, but twelve days of cinema in a row really get to the substance. In the end, there is sometimes little room for any other feelings than oversaturation – and the longing for some normalcy. The Cannes bubble holds you tight, even the short distances over the Croisette, past luxury hotels and boutiques, don’t exactly help with the reality check. Of course, a film festival like Cannes thrives on creating a simulation of reality; one is only too happy to follow the temptations of the cinema into the dark halls.

In the past few days, however, a golden glow has hung over the festival, which has nothing to do with the sun, which in the second week more than compensates for the omissions of the first few days. It is also a generation of (almost exclusively male) filmmakers – but the return of Frenchwoman Catherine Breillat after a stroke is definitely one of them – who are once again basking in their careers in the autumn: Martin Scorsese, Wim Wenders, Marco Bellocchio and not to forgotten the lively again Aki Kaurismäki. At the beginning of the week, the Finn had pushed the window to reality wide open with “Fallen Leaves” in the competition. The radio continuously flushes news of the Ukraine war in his tragi-comic love story

Cinema that describes the world

But not even Kaurismäki can prepare you for “The Old Oak” by Ken Loach, which concludes the competition on Friday evening. There has been a lot of talk over the past few days about the state of film art, which this year has once again met the Cannes Festival’s own standards for a long time.

So how can film criticism do justice to a film that is neither aesthetically ambitious nor breaks new ground in terms of narrative. But who tells something about the state of the world so vehemently and empathetically with the simplest of means that the cinema hall then becomes very quiet for a moment?

Ken Loach has dedicated his entire career to the struggle for social justice, from speaking out for the British working class to films about the Sandinista Revolution and the Irish Fraternity War. With “The Old Oak” he now brings the world to the cold north of England, where the arrival of Syrian refugees in the former mining town of Durham in 2016 quickly led to social tensions.

For those left behind, the eponymous pub acts as the last place that still stands for continuity in a rapidly changing world. The owner TJ (Dave Turner) offers the traumatized people his premises as a refuge where refugees and locals come together. But his attempt at dialogue turns even old friends against him, and the “old oak” becomes the target of acts of sabotage.

The Old Oak Ken Loach

The camera of the young Syrian Yara (Ebla Mari), whose family is waiting for a sign of life from her father from home, replaces words in “The Old Oak” that sound inappropriate anyway given the tragedy. And Yara’s mom cooks a Syrian dish for TJ after his dog’s death. The food unites them in pain, like the shared meals during the miners’ strike in the 1950s. The words solidarity and resistance are also embroidered by Syrians and Englishmen on the banner that ends up hanging in the Old Oak.

Basically, they also describe the entire work of Loach, who in most cases made his films with down-to-earth pragmatism. But between all the film art this year, you suddenly become aware of what cinema can be. Ken Loach has announced his retirement three times. After “The Old Oak” it is difficult to imagine that the 86-year-old already thinking about quitting.

Judging by Alice Rohrwacher’s films, the Italian director is also an old soul. Her fourth feature film “La Chimera” concludes her Italian trilogy with another journey into the past, the trail of which leads to the present. Rohrwacher and her cinematographer Hélène Louvart work with 35mm and Super 16 footage, which gives the images a soft texture, with ragged edges.

A British “grave robber” named Arthur (Josh O’Connor, known as Prince Charles from “The Crown”) has just returned from prison and is staying at the country mansion of the terribly bad-tempered Miss Havisham (Isabella Rossellini). He is looking for consolation after the loss of his beloved Beniamina – and a secret door that is supposed to lead to the underground kingdom of the Etruscans and their burial chambers filled with treasures.

Only a few female filmmakers understand like Rohrwacher how to merge the impression of a past time with the present. “La Chimera” is a sensual experience, Louvart’s images are like paintings, bucolic and at the same time already in the state of dissolution. Rohrwacher’s figures also seem to haunt time, looking for a hold on the past in the now. At the end of the film, Italiana (Carol Duarte), who wants to put Arthur back on the right path, asks about ownership of our own history: “Does it belong to all of us or to no one?” “La Chimera” doesn’t answer that, but its pictures come a little bit closer to the truth.