Review of Versus: The Life and Films of Ken Loach

Surprisingly gentle film about the life and work of Ken Loach - lots of talking heads from actors and others, scenes of the director at works, a non-chronological account of his oeuvre, some clips. Not quite a catalogue because some films were missing (well, if there was a mention of Carla's Song I missed it) but pretty thorough, including some I'd never heard of - Black Jack, for example.

I'd forgotten, if I'd ever known, that Loach was responsible for The Big Flame, a Liverpool film that inspired the inception of the 'Libertarian Marxist' organisation that I hung around in the early 1980s.

There's quite a long section on the 'Perdition' affair, and no sign that anyone learned anything from it. At the time I rather uncomfortably assumed that people who I otherwise admired were contaminated with anti-semitism. I have a rather more nuanced view now, not least because of a rather good documentary about the Kastner affair on which Perdition, and the earlier right wing Zionist 'Perfidy', were based. But I still feel uncomfortable about the stance and the tone of Jim Allen's diatribe against Zionism.

A few observations: Loach appears to feel no irony at being an engaged Marxist on the side of the really poor and wretched, and being lauded by the luvvies at Cannes; and the film has an odd slip into regular luvvie bio-pic with an account of his early career as an actor, complete with dressing-room shots etc. And didn't everyone smoke a lot!

Watched at the Landsdowne Film Club in Stroud.