Movie: Jimmy's Hall (Ken Loach, 2014)
"Hearts starve as well as bodies, give us bread, but give us roses."
The first half of this film is a wonderful representation of the ideas and feelings behind "Bread and Roses". It basically consists of a series of short vignettes depicting the joys of socialist idealism. and contains some unexpectedly graceful passages. I could have watched hours more of Irish villagers passionately dancing, discussing politics, reading literature, defying the Irish establishment, and loving and caring for each other in their small modestly utopian hall.. In the second half, it loses some if its grace, getting way too didactic in dramatising the antagonism between Jimmy Gralton's activitsts and their enemies,, but for a long while this is the ideal version of a Ken Loach film.
I also found Loach's didacticism more welcome here than in his other films. I don't know much about 1920's/1930's Irish history, and was for example surprised to find that the IRA and Gralton were enemies. Gralton was an Irish socialist activist who became the only Irish-born person to be deported out of Ireland. He had spent 10 years out of exile in the USA after establishing a town hall in which his fellow villagers could get together to dance, play sports, study literature, discuss politics, sing, be educated, and create meaningful communities independently from the church and the state. The church and the state are no fans of such heresies, like even less that the villagers get politically conscious helping poor families in land disputes against the rich aristocracy, and smell trouble when upon returning from his exile, Gralton aims to re-establish the now decrepit townhall, and possibly reconnect with his old flame Oona.
At one of those land disputes the film has Gralton speak to a group of villagers coming to protest land theft. He touches on familiar socialist points arguing that it's impossible to claim that Ireland is united as one nation as landlords and bankers have different interests than factory workers and miners, that he saw firsthand in New York how a system based on exploitation led to the Great Depression, and that we need to "take control of our lives again and work for need, not for greed. And not to just survive like a dog, but to live. And to celebrate, to dance, to sing as free human beings." I have a fondness for rousing speeches in films, so I quite liked this, but it is definitely a good example of Lynch's (and Paul Laverty's - his regular screenwriter), tendency for needless sopabox speechifying. Those final words are a blunt representation of everything we've seen in the film's first half which almost makes you want to live and particpate in Jimmy's hall, in the enjoyable company of the villagers expanding their political, emotional and intellectual worlds in a shared space that gives them freedom to create and imagine better lives for themselves. The film's editing is wonderfully attuned to the rhythms of their life and doesn't rush to tell a story, but to give an impression of the various activities going on in the hall, 10 years before and now. These scenes are filmed with great love and patience, letting a reading of Yeats or a class about Celtic singing, or a political discussion go on for longer than nexessary, allowing you to really share in the experience and joy together with the villagers. And all the while Jimmy and Oona exchange romantic glances, culminating in a beautfully filmed silent dance, an expression of their emotions which they can't quite say out louid - it takes place after Jimmy returns from exile and finds Oona married with children.
It's a great advertisement for socialism, in particular Irish socialism, with the soundtrack filled with those typical Irish folksy symphonies that are half-joyous, half-sentimental. It's all of course heavily romanticised, but a big part of the job of a political movement is to sell a narrative. And the film is a good reminder that one of the reasons for the success of socialism was its promise of "Bread and Roses". It was not just about economic theory and making sure that people who lived in barely livable conditions could live in slightly more livable conditions, but about self-actualisation, individual liberty and the ability to live happy prosperous lives, allowing people to experience and explore wonderful things independently from the trappings of state, church, social class or birthplace. That's an incredibly strong story and one that has been abandoned by too many of the leftist-progressive parties of today. Ofteng torgetting the roses entirely, their message (crudely summarised) often doesn't extend much further than arguing that people deserve more bread or that more kinds of people deserve bread, sometimes even without inagining that more bread is a possibility.
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