Whether Jimmy’s Hall turns out to be director Ken Loach’s last feature film before he switches to documentaries, it certainly isn’t the whimper that at least one reviewer has described. Set in Country Leitrim in 1931, it depicts the struggle of a man, Jimmy Gralton (Barry Ward) to re-open a community hall closed 10 years earlier for fear of the communist messages it spread.
Jimmy has returned from a 10-year exile in New York with a gramophone player, jazz records and his principals intact. Ostensibly, he is there to comfort his mother (Eileen Henry), who is on her own following the death of another family member. He reconnects with an old flame, Oonagh (Simone Kirby), now married with two children. The villagers, forced to dance in the open lanes, beg Jimmy to open the Pease-Connolly Hall, a tin-roofed shack. Locals mobilise in support of him, but his work falls in direct opposition to the church, represented by pulpit-bashing Father Sheridan (Jim Norton), who claims a monopoly on education in the parish.
The film is a collection of everything one admires about Loach’s collaborations with screenwriter Paul Laverty, whose contribution to the resurgence of this auteur since their first work, Carla’s Song in 1996, shouldn’t be undervalued.
First, there is the forgotten piece of social history dramatised by the filmmaker. We don’t learn much in English schools about the aftermath of the division of Ireland in the 1920s, nor indeed what life was like in Ireland during America’s great depression when the Irish Diaspora had no money to send home. We know little about the growth of communism in Ireland during the 1920s and 1930s and the role of the church (on behalf of the state) in repressing it.
Second, there is the irrepressible, principled hero, with a weather-beaten face, who quietly takes a stand at great personal risk. Loach’s heroes aren’t conventionally charismatic; they are pragmatic, cheeky but always with an eye on the prize, even if they don’t get the girl. They may endure tactical defeats but inspire a strategic victory on the part of the audience taking up their cause.
Third, there are the contemporary parallels. The Pease-Connolly Hall could be any recreational facility that keeps the locals out of mischief faced with funding cuts. Jimmy himself faces deportation without a hearing in his own country; there are parallels (in Loach’s mind at least) with the predicament faced by Julian Assange. Then there are the forced evictions that Jimmy with his friends protest from landowners who can afford to show more clemency. Significantly, in the film, the church is not seen to intervene in such matters. There is also the naming, at a Sunday service, of those who attended Jimmy’s hall, and the violent repercussions that follow; one thinks of the listing of homosexuals in African countries for the purpose of persecution.
Fourth, there are the pleasures of non-professional actors in leading parts who grace the film with living authenticity. Eileen Henry looks the part and has a practical, no-nonsense style of delivery. When Jimmy is about to be taken away by police, she simply asks without any apparent guile: “Can he change his jacket?” She gives the Garda a polite talking to, reminding them that they all used her mobile library, offering them tea.
Fifth, there are the extended debate scenes that air points of view and give an audience a chance to think: “Who do I agree with?” This happens when Jimmy is invited to speak at a rally, even though it may cost him the hall and his “quiet life”.
Father Sheridan is nominally the film’s villain, yet he is shown to mollify his tone, notably when Jimmy tells him in the confessional: “You have more hate in you than love” – cue a visit to the drinks cabinet. The one instantly recognisable cast member, Andrew Scott (Moriarty in TV’s Sherlock), has a small role as a moderate priest who does not believe in Father Sheridan’s high-handed tactics.
Loach doesn’t show you winnable fights being won. Rather, he invites you to consider the examples of those who fought and ask yourself, would you join them? The films aren’t intended to be complete, immersive experiences; they are meant to leave you dissatisfied, but not riled up, so you can reflect on the range of issues raised in the film. Jimmy’s Hall is not a linear piece of agit-prop but an invitation to ask more questions and seek more answers. May Loach make more like it!
With his 2011 film Carnage, director Roman Polanski re-discovered his metier: he is far better filming a small number of characters in a confined space and letting them fly than making plodding thrillers like Frantic, The Ninth Gate and The Ghost. Polanski isn’t a manipulator of audiences; he stands back and allows a situation to develop from a cool distance. He doesn’t bother making the viewer identify with the protagonist – necessary for a good thriller. Instead, he shows up characters’ foolishness. In his thrillers, the denouement isn’t cathartic, rather terminus – fin de la voyage. This is also true, to better effect, of his dramas.
Venus in Fur is a two-hander, a French language adaptation of the play by David Ives by Polanski and Ives (which sounds like a detective series on Alibi). In it, a theatre director, Thomas Novachek (Mathieu Amalric), attempts to cast the lead in his own adaptation of Leopold Sacher-Masoch’s novel, Venus in Fur (the subject of an apparently awful 1970 film). He is visited by a would-be actress, Vanda Jourdain (Emmanuelle Seigner), who convinces him to let her read. Once she does so, with Thomas reading the part of the male lead, Severin, he is under her spell. The film examines the motivations of a director in his choice of material, with Vanda more catalyst than character subjecting Thomas to a version of his own sado-masochistic fantasy.
It would be cringe-worthy but for Seigner having such fun with the part – and Polanski enjoying the set up, giving Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” as a ring tone. Amalric, who looks a little like Polanski and has directed films himself, is a good foil. Thomas isn’t a seasoned theatre director but a writer who has assumed the role because he believes: “No one understands my work”. Vanda is quite literally the spirit of dream casting made flesh, first seen as an invisible breeze (a point of view shot) down a boulevard before entering the battered theatre where Thomas had held auditions earlier. She is obscenely late, describing a catalogue of disasters – heel caught in a drain, unwelcome attention from a metro passenger – and has a CV that boasts “the Urinal Theatre”. (She is, ahem, taking the wee.) But she is prepared and has – mysteriously – a full copy of the script.
She even has a period dress, a frilly orange and white number that suggests Bavarian barmaid crossed with flamenco dancer and an authentic smoking jacket for Thomas that dates back to 1869 – but you can never trust the label. (I wondered if the washing instructions read: “Hand to domestic”.)
Thomas is interrupted by phone calls from his partner Marie-Cecile, mirrored by phone calls that Vanda makes herself. She simultaneously bewitches and infuriates him but before long he is making excuses about staying late.
Vanda’s (and Ives’) argument is that boys who play at submitting to dominatrix figures are, in fact, limiting and imprisoning the woman holding the switch cane. (There are no whips here.) The fantasy is pathetic. Viewers will find it hard to disagree. Another director might play the drama for erotic tension, but though Seigner appears in undergarments for long sections of the film, her line readings and glances never suggest that Thomas will explode with desire; he sticks too firmly to his own script. Any potential sexual tension dissipates; we wonder instead when Thomas will say: “Thank you, I’ll be in touch”.
In the notes for the film, Polanski is described as having an aversion to improvisation: he’ll block a scene extensively but not allow his actors to experiment with the dialogue. In a strange way, Venus in Fur represents the dangers of sticking to a pre-ordained track; you end up trapped, unfulfilled and wonder what you were trying to do in the first place. The film is an entertaining critique of its director’s method, but at least is a satisfying chamber piece than chamber pot. Good use of an abandoned theatrical set – for a musical version of Stagecoach – too.