FFWD Weekly
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Video by FFWD Staff Nobody captures moments of conflict as well as Britain’s Ken Loach, and watching his movies is at times like listening to the couple next door scream, throw things and otherwise knock each other about. Loach makes personal films rooted in the tradition of social realist drama that achieve greatness in their straightforward approach to complex issues. His latest, My Name is Joe (UK 1998), is no less difficult to digest, though it is leavened by occasional humour as it relates the story of a recovering alcoholic attempting to make a new start after a life in the cycles of crime and abuse. Loach knows people and his uncanny ability to portray characters afflicted more by their own weaknesses than any external forces is at the heart of his work. In My Name is Joe, alcohol and drug addiction play a central role, but chemical dependency is never glamourized the way it is in so many other films today. Loach’s characters live hard lives with few opportunities and even fewer genuine pleasures. Joe is a Glaswegian with a troubled past. He collects his dole, attends AA meetings, and coaches the neighbourhood hooligans who make up the local soccer team. He’s just happy that he hasn’t had a drink in 10 months. When he meets Sarah, a child welfare worker, his stoic complacency is shattered by the unlikely love that develops between them. The success of Loach’s story is entirely in the characterizations. A film that is this politically charged could easily become preachy without the presence of realistic human characters. Sarah works in child welfare but has no kids of her own. Joe’s paternal attitude to the players on his team is considerably more believable when you consider his own alcoholic past. Ironically, it’s Joe’s attempt to help Liam, one of his young friends, kick a smack habit that proves to be Joe’s undoing. He is soon back serving the needs of a local drug dealer in order to pay back his friend’s debt. Loach shows lower class Scottish life to be a complicated mess, plagued by an ineffectual welfare system incapable of relieving individual desperation. Looked at this way, Liam’s fate is about as predictable and inevitable as Joe’s own end. It’s more pathetic than tragic, but no less moving in the way it leaves you with that hollow feeling in the pit of your stomach.

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