I bought these two dvd-boxes some time ago, The Ken Loach Collection - vol. 1 & 2. Great stuff, but I haven't had time to really go through all of it even though there are several films that I haven't yet seen.
But this past weekend I got around to watch "Cathy Come Home" (1966) which I believe is really a part of some BBC tv series that Loach was involved in.
In any case, this film is a gem and I am now absolutely positive that Loach is one of my favourite directors.
"Cathy Come Home" is a muddy and gritty depiction of a working class couple in a British city (Manchester, I believe) who starts out rather fine but due to housing shortage, poverty and a inhumane social welfare system they are soon heading for a desperately bleak future. The film is a hardcore realism drama - but Loach weaves in what appears to be documentary segments. And the result is fantastic.
You know when you watch a film and afterwards you have that feeling of having been witnessing a glimpse of life. Real life, authenticity..... Not "based on a true story"-real-life.
This is just one film, one example of why I love Ken Loach's films. His films are always political but he has the ability to convert politics and theory to real, honest stories about life.
His films in recent years are great stuff too.... It's a Free World (2007) and The Wind That Shakes the Barley were both amazing in their own different ways.
I really had no idea what I was going to say about Loach here in this thread, I just thought he deserved a thread of his own. Hopefully someone else is better destined than me to strike up some stringent discussions about the man.
Any Loach fans out there??
But this past weekend I got around to watch "Cathy Come Home" (1966) which I believe is really a part of some BBC tv series that Loach was involved in.
In any case, this film is a gem and I am now absolutely positive that Loach is one of my favourite directors.
"Cathy Come Home" is a muddy and gritty depiction of a working class couple in a British city (Manchester, I believe) who starts out rather fine but due to housing shortage, poverty and a inhumane social welfare system they are soon heading for a desperately bleak future. The film is a hardcore realism drama - but Loach weaves in what appears to be documentary segments. And the result is fantastic.
You know when you watch a film and afterwards you have that feeling of having been witnessing a glimpse of life. Real life, authenticity..... Not "based on a true story"-real-life.
This is just one film, one example of why I love Ken Loach's films. His films are always political but he has the ability to convert politics and theory to real, honest stories about life.
His films in recent years are great stuff too.... It's a Free World (2007) and The Wind That Shakes the Barley were both amazing in their own different ways.
I really had no idea what I was going to say about Loach here in this thread, I just thought he deserved a thread of his own. Hopefully someone else is better destined than me to strike up some stringent discussions about the man.
Any Loach fans out there??
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The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, "seeing that his work was good".
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They had temporarily escaped the factories, the warehouses, the slaughterhouses, the car washes - they'd be back in captivity the next day but now they were out - they were wild with freedom. They weren't thinking about the slavery of poverty. Or the slavery of welfare and food stamps. The rest of us would be all right until the poor learned how to make atom bombs in their basements.
The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, "seeing that his work was good".
--------
They had temporarily escaped the factories, the warehouses, the slaughterhouses, the car washes - they'd be back in captivity the next day but now they were out - they were wild with freedom. They weren't thinking about the slavery of poverty. Or the slavery of welfare and food stamps. The rest of us would be all right until the poor learned how to make atom bombs in their basements.