THERE’S SOMETHING of the ghost about Ken Loach. He has long been a director
who is easier to respect than enjoy. In terms of resident glamour, his is
the last council house on Stella Street. His films seem stuck in another
era, and picky locals frequently have a pop at him for never “moving on”.
Yet Loach has never looked more pink and alive.
Terrific reviews of his last two films, My Name is Joe and the Cannes
Festival toast Sweet Sixteen, have pumped Viagra into a flagging
career.
Ae Fond Kiss, the title of a Rabbie Burns catch, is the third part of a
trilogy exploring contemporary life on the west coast of Scotland, and again
it is written by Loach’s long-standing collaborator, Paul Laverty. The film
charts the relationship between a Catholic teacher, Roisin (Eva Birthistle),
and a Muslim graduate, Casim (Atta Yaqub), and it’s born of the racial
freeze that has descended on the ethnic communities of Glasgow since “the
war on terrorism” was openly declared.
The result, says the shy and freckly writer, is “a story about the fetters in
people’s minds”. I’m struck by this comment because Loach doesn’t seem
entirely unfettered himself. I’m destined to meet the director in a
makeshift canteen in Glasgow, where the crew for Ae Fond Kiss has
pitched base camp. I’m more than slightly nervous. Loach works in mysterious
ways. His film sets are closed shops. Journalists are rarely granted an
audience. And the director is never less than elusive about the film turning
in his head.
In the flesh, he is surprisingly kindly, and extremely polite. Furious too,
when he discovers that I’ve got hold of a script through the press office.
He nearly drops the lunch plate perched on his lap. “How stupid of them!” he
groans, attacking his peas. “I’m appalled. Heads will roll. I wouldn’t send
anyone a script. You never know how this film might turn out.”
It’s not the idle gripe of a control freak. Loach famously refuses to tell his
actors where their characters are going, how the story develops or what
happens in the end. He likes his actors to work blind, because he needs
spontaneity to feed his visions. Pages of dialogue are used as sparingly as
fish bait, and handed out on a need-to-know daily basis. He is terrified
that I’m going to spill the plot to his ever-curious leads, and makes me
swear not to reveal a word. Allaying the fears of the Muslim cast was hard
enough.
“They had to be Glaswegian and Pakistani. If they were one or the other, you
would lose half the point,” says Loach. “And being Glaswegian is not
something the Muslim community embrace wholeheartedly.” There was also
considerable anxiety in the Muslim community about the film’s motives.
“You understand the concern when you hear the insults and read about women
having their headscarves pulled off in the street,” says Loach. “There would
be an absolute outcry if it happened to a nun.”
In fact, Laverty’s script is commendably even-handed about ethnic mindsets.
There are no easy rides for Catholics, Glaswegians or Muslims. “The
interesting thing you find when you cut through the politics and external
disparities is that the battles are the same within every family, whatever
the costume or creed. I find that reassuring really,” says Loach.
After lunch, we are whisked to a neat Catholic day school in a quiet suburb to
shoot a chase scene. Inside, there’s an air of ambling chaos.
One of the child extras has turned up with the wrong top, and a location
manager is frantically trying to persuade his mother to extract the garment
from a washing machine. “A firing-squad offence,” jokes Loach as he wanders
off towards the school gymnasium.
The lead actress, Eva Birthistle, is upstairs in the music room practising
piano scales. “I’ve never worked like this before,” says the lithe young
Irish actress. “It’s strange not knowing what’s going to happen to your
character from one day to the next. If it was any other director, I would
have said ‘No way’. But because it’s Ken Loach you suspend those fears. The
nice thing is that you don’t have too much time to panic, and you’re
encouraged to improvise.”
It’s this fierce documentary commitment to performance that is the hallmark of
Loach’s career. Mike Leigh has a similar belief in the supremacy of the
actor, which is why these two Old Labour stalwarts are so frequently
confused. Leigh is thanked by strangers for directing Kes, and Loach
is hailed for making Abigail’s Party. Apparently they’ve both
learned to enjoy this tooth-grinding faux pas, though I suspect it took
years. The difference between the two directors, and the way they handle
their actors, could not be more marked.
While Leigh workshops his actors to death to heighten his situation dramas,
Loach stands back and asks them to make it look as if it’s really happening.
On set, Loach cuts an almost paternal figure with his large square glasses,
jeans and Barbour jacket. He shepherds his actors with the tireless
enthusiasm of a Butlin’s Redcoat, and his instructions are precise and
uncomplicated. No one seems fussed by the endless retakes.
Ray Beckett, an engineer, has worked with Loach since Raining Stones in
1993. “He won’t leave a scene until he gets as much out of it as he can,”
says Beckett. “Sometimes he just lets the cameras roll on and on after a
take without telling anyone. He gets some really interesting footage from
that. His work is like an extension of documentary film-making rather than
drama. With a Merchant Ivory drama (Beckett worked on three during the
1980s) you know at the beginning of the day more or less what methods you’re
going to use to get through it. A Loach film requires flexibility of
thinking on the part of everyone.”
Fergus Clegg, the art director, and another long-time collaborator (this is
his eighth Loach film), is fresh from the set of Thunderbirds. “This
is what film-making is all about,” he says, throwing an arm towards the grey
school foyer. “It’s much more interesting, and a lot more honest than
Hollywood. A Loach film is not a dream factory, it’s real life, which the
medium, and media, seem less and less interested in. Many people prefer the
McDonald’s attitude to film. Ken has a lot more integrity. He deals with
issues which aren’t always popular, and because he’s one of the rare
directors who shoots in sequence, you experience the story as it unfolds.
There is spontaneity and surprise.”
Shock too. When Loach filmed Land and Freedom, about the Civil War in
Spain, the dynamics of the film changed as members of a close-knit cast were
dramatically killed off. “No one had the slightest inkling what would happen
next,” says Clegg, “which created remarkable tensions and incredible set
chemistry.”
It all seems a far cry from the chase scene Loach is trying to bend into shape
in a school corridor in Glasgow. A bunch of swearing kids are being chased
by a fat caretaker and an apoplectic schoolteacher.
There seems precious little to direct. Shots like this were two a penny during
the glory days of Grange Hill. Two hours later, and Loach is still
test-driving the fleeting point.
What ineluctable truth, I wonder, is the maestro trying to nail? The kids are
surreally unflapped by the endless takes. They’re having fun with the
insults, and they’re effortlessly fit. The adult actors are puffing in the
foyer like a couple of dray horses who’ve entered all six races at Epsom
under the insane delusion that they might actually get placed.
Stamina is clearly the secret of making an unforced, naturalistic Loach movie.
I’m thinking of nipping outside for a quick dram when Loach slopes over.
“More gritty social realism,” he says with a wry, blue twinkle. He simply
can’t get enough of it.
Four decades of true grit
Poor Cow (1967) Loneliness and low lifes
Kes (1969) Boy meets bird in this spirited but tragic classic
Family Life (1971) Teenage meltdown, documentary-style
The Gamekeeper (1980) One man and his game — a year in the life of . .
.
Hidden Agenda (1990) Love, murder and Frances McDormand in Belfast
Riff-Raff (1990) Falling apart in the building trade
Ladybird Ladybird (1994) An “unfit” mother’s struggle with social
services
Land and Freedom (1995) A Liverpudlian’s bid to join the Spanish Civil
War
Carla’s Song (1996) Robert Carlyle falls for a Nicaraguan exile
My Name Is Joe (1998) Thirtysomething love in the Glasgow slums
Bread and Roses (2000) Unions, the sisterhood and Adrien Brody
Sweet Sixteen (2002) Doomed teenage dreams
