Just as this biographical documentary about British film director Ken Loach was about to start, I feared it was going to be about as thrilling to watch as an episode of The South Bank Show with Melvyn Bragg.  Such a reservation by me was severely misplaced however.  Instead, what I saw was a superbly put together documentary by the BBC and British Film Institute.  It was really interesting, incredibly insightful and surprisingly very uplifting by the end.  If you are a big lover of British films like I am then this programme is a must see.

The format of this documentary was not as boring or as predictable as I had prior expected to it be.  Yes, as it looked back at Loach’s life there was a chronological order to it, but it was not done in a very rigid way.  It started off in the present tense where we told how in 2014, Ken Loach had retired after making films for fifty years.  With the Conservative Party now back in power though in the UK this then had prompted him to come out of retirement and make one last film in 2016.   We had present day footage from the making of this latest film, interchanged throughout the documentary with a look back at his life and previous films.  This look back at his life took the form of archive film and news footage combined with present day interviews of people who had worked with him,e.g film crew, actors.

Ken Loach : “If you make films about people’s lives I think politics is essential, it is the essence of drama, the essence of conscience”.

People familiar with the work of Ken Loach will know just how politically charged most of his films are. Therefore, it was both essential and interesting that this fact was greatly touched upon by him and others throughout the documentary.  Friend and his producer for many years Tony Garnett, explained how back in the 1960s England was a very class ridden society and how Ken and he wanted to change that.  An example of their left-wing politics featuring in an early film they did together was Kathy Come Home(1966).  It was about the then desperate situation of a lack of working-class housing.  The impact of this film was that huge that it resulted in both Ken Loach and Tony Garnett sharing a cup of tea with a government minister about the issue. 

When I first saw a film by Ken Loach I was seventeen years old and studying Media Studies at college.  I was quite literally bowled over by Raining Stones(1993) and Ladybird Ladybird(1994) because I had never ever seen films like that before.  There was this gritty realism to them that gave them such a powerful impact.  Their sympathy for the working class was unquestionably important here but there was more to it than just that.  The way these films had been shot was new to me, there was a realism to this style of filming that was sort of breathtakingly emotional.

Therefore, I loved the bit in this documentary that referred to Loach’s observational, realistic style.  It was revealed to us how this style of his had been heavily influenced by Czech films.  A film by Czech Film Institute played as Loach explained how this observational style helps to, ‘bring out the humanity of people in front of the camera’.  The camera here is like a person observing, he added.

What I liked about this programme was that it was not an overly sycophantic celebration of Ken Loach.   By this, I mean it wasn’t too gushing in praise of him or too cringe worthy crawly like say we get towards celebrities on Piers Morgan’s Life Stories.  We heard about the negative reactions to some of Loach’s films as well as about his failed attempts to make a series of documentaries about the Trade Unions.  I had no idea that in the past due to him being ostracized by the British film industry,  he did not make a film for over twelve years.  Loach recounted with horror how he had to make two mainstream commercials back then just in order to make a living.  He felt he had betrayed his left wing political views by doing such work.

As highlighted at the start, this documentary was particularly interesting for me because it told me information about Ken Loach that I had no prior knowledge of.  For instance, I had no idea his filming style had been influenced by Czech films, nor was I aware of his failed attempt at becoming a documentary filmmaker.  About two thirds of the way through this documentary Loach spoke about the tragic time in his life when he and his family had been involved in a serious road traffic accident. It resulted in him losing his mother-in-law and his second child.  I had no idea that he experienced such a personal tragedy in his life.  On a much lighter note and at another point in the film, it was revealed to us how he had once been an understudy to Kenneth Williams in a play.  A documentary is bland if you have heard all of the stories before elsewhere, pleasingly this did not apply to me with this one.

The final thing worthy of note was the great background music.  Alongside a stunning opening visual sequence where Loach said a few words about the making of films, the emotive music immediately helped creative a sort of intriguing intensity to the piece.  I also loved how there was an uplifting climax at the end.  Again, this was achieved through visuals, the spoken word, but most of all by the music.  I came away from watching this documentary feeling inspired.

Overall, I can really only think of two things to criticize in this documentary. Firstly, unless you had eyesight as good as Superman’s then the graphics/written captions that we saw were way to small, i.e nearly impossible to read.  Secondly, due to becoming familiar with Loach’s work in the 1990s, I would have liked his films in this period discussed more. Raining Stones is my all-time favourite British film so I was somewhat disappointed to see it hardly touched upon.  Ladybird Ladybird was highlighted more via including comments from its main star Crissy Rock, however I still would have liked to have heard more about that too.  I would therefore argue that this documentary was rushed a bit too much towards the end of it.

I would recommend this documentary to anybody that loves films. Left-wing Ken Loach with his ardent left-wing political views is a polarizing figure without question. However, rather than being described a “barking mad Marxist”, I see him as a pioneer of the British film industry.  He brought realism and working class struggles to the big screen and so for that his work needs applauding.  I congratulate the BBC and the BFI for making such a good documentary about the life Ken Loach,  he will always be the KING and LEGEND of British film for me! 4/5.