Loach, Ken

Loach, Ken (1936- ), British film and television director, closely associated with subjects concerned with working-class experience and political sensibility. Loach was born in Nuneaton, Warwickshire. The son of an electrician, he read law at Oxford University, then, after a little acting, joined the BBC in 1963, where he directed episodes of Z Cars, regarded as the most authentic television police drama of its time.

Loach’s obvious talent for true-to-life subject material led to the six-part Diary of a Young Man (1964) and to his working on the The Wednesday Play and Play for Today series. For the latter, among others, he directed James O’Connor’s Three Clear Sundays (1965), Nell Dunn’s Up the Junction (1965), and the two plays that established his reputation, Jeremy Sandford’s Cathy Come Home (1966) and David Mercer’s In Two Minds (1967). Each was produced by Tony Garnett, with whom he set up a production company, Kestrel Films. These ventures were a development of the more comfortable drama series Armchair Theatre, but were shot on film and offered a greater sense of immediacy and topicality. Cathy Come Home, for example, about a homeless family, coincided with the creation of the campaigning organization Shelter; In Two Minds, influenced by the humanist writing of the psychiatrist R. D. Laing, enlarged the debate that challenged conventional understanding and treatment of schizophrenia. Although Loach turned to films, often with Garnett producing, he continued to direct for television; for the BBC he directed the admired four-part Days of Hope (1975), written by Jim Allen, and for ATV (Associated Television) he directed The Gamekeeper (1980), a play by Barry Hines.

Loach’s move to feature films was more controversial and uneven. Without Garnett producing, his adaptation of Nell Dunn’s novel Poor Cow (1967) seemed both patronizing and sentimental. With Garnett, however, Kes (1969), Family Life (1971), their reworking of In Two Minds, and the period piece Black Jack (1979) were more austere and more successful. His 1984 television documentary, Which Side Are You On?, was considered too politically controversial to be shown, and Hidden Agenda (1990), set in Northern Ireland, although it won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes, left critics perplexed. In 1980s Britain, Loach’s films frequently appeared more quaint than relevant, romantic constructions of history and society. Black Jack and Looks and Smiles (1981), both excellent examples of Loach’s work, received mixed receptions. However, a surge in both opportunity and creativity enabled him to establish an international reputation as the principled and articulate voice of Britain’s political Left, with such varied films as Fatherland (1986), Riff-Raff (1990), Raining Stones (1993), Ladybird, Ladybird (1994), Land and Freedom (1995), and Carla’s Song (1996). The Flickering Flame (1996), his first full-length documentary for the BBC, which examines the Liverpool dockers’ strike of 1996, and My Name is Joe (1998) helped maintain his reputation as the one remaining film voice in Britain of a generation of principled political activists whose influence has waned.

In 2000 he directed his first film in the United States, Bread and Roses, about the fight for union rights of a group of South American immigrant cleaners in Los Angeles, and in 2001 he returned to television with The Navigators, showing the detrimental effects of rail privatization. The ironically titled Sweet Sixteen (2002), about a Greenock teenager who turns to drug-dealing to provide a stable home for his mother, was compared favourably by critics to Kes for its authentic portrayal of tormented adolescence. Loach also contributed to the collective film 11'09''01—September 11 (2002), suggesting parallels between the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and the 1973 American-backed coup led by Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Loach's next film was the Glasgow-set interracial love story Ae Fond Kiss (2004). He then won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2006 with the historical drama The Wind That Shakes the Barley, about Irish republicanism. It's a Free World… (2007) highlighted the plight of immigrant workers in the UK.