Ken Loach interview

With ’Cathy Come Home‘, Ken Loach created one of the most iconic London films ever. Now he‘s back in the capital for the first time in ten years to make a film about the immigrant labour market. Time Out witnesses his unique working methods on set.

‘People always put us down for doing certain sorts of films,’ says O’Brien. The usual accusation of Loach’s fiercest detractors is that his films are heavy on issues but light on humanity. ‘I think hopefully that Angie is a bit more of a surprise than that. We didn’t want to come at it from a predictable, worthy angle. We wanted to look at the girl on the street. And we didn’t want to do her as a victim, but as someone who’s really ambitious. I think that ambition is at the core of most of our working lives. Ken was saying that Kierston who plays Angie reminds him a bit of Carol White, the actress in “Cathy Come Home” and “Poor Cow”.’

Talking to Laverty, you can hear in his voice a hunger for justice and a defiant, socialist desire to tell stories of the oppressed and ignored. It’s no wonder that he and Loach work so well, slipping into a cycle of writing and filming that has served seven feature films. Laverty tells me that tonight in London he’ll be showing ‘The Wind that Shakes the Barley’ to a delegation from Gaza (‘I hope there’s no drones flying about,’ he quips). He chuckles too at a mention of the battering that the film got from some commentators in the British press. ‘I can’t say I was very surprised really, not when you call the Union Jack “the butcher’s apron”,’ he says of the film in which two brothers end up on opposing sides of the Irish Civil War in early 1920s Cork. ‘I laughed a lot when the Sun said that this is a film that people must not see. In the Irish edition of the paper they had a headline that said something like, “Cillian’s Boys Tan Brits in Cannes”!’

As we speak, Loach starts another take, shooting the crowd scene several more times before he decides he’s got what he wants. By the final take, what first looked like a lifeless bunch of extras earning a few extra quid for the day now looks like a genuine crowd of hungry, lively and desperate men and women who will freely give up their dignity to beg for a job. It’s uncomfortable to watch, which, surely, is exactly the point that Loach is trying to make here today, round the back of just another unknown pub in just another unknown corner of east London.

‘These Times’ will have its premiere on Channel 4 next autumn.