Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Barry Ward, Simone Kirby, Andrew Scott, Jim Norton, Brian F. O’Byrne, Paul Fox, Sorcha Fox, Aisling Franciosi, Karl Geary, Denise Gough, Aileen Henry, Seamus Hughes, Francis Magee, Conor McDermottroe.
For as long as Ken Loach is alive and well, there really should be no reason for him to ever give up film making. As his latest piece, Jimmy’s Hall, shows that where there is a story involving social commentary, of wrongs visited upon a particular person, there should be a person to be able to tell it and they don’t come any better than Ken Loach.
Jimmy’s Hall is another great film which looks at some of the forgotten people of the 20th Century whose story should be known universally. James Gralton is the only man to have been deported from his natural homeland of Ireland, his crime, to give people a different type of hope against the remembrance of civil war that tore Ireland apart and kept the stranglehold of Church and State firmly entrenched in people’s lives.
A film of great quality and yet a picture that makes you despair for the way life is at times is so run by the person who wields a pencil and who can command all to listen to them. In particularly sensitive scene, Father Sheridan, played with great tenacity by the superb Jim Norton, is seen taking down the people’s names of those who decide to put some joy into their lives and attend a dance in the Hall. With help of the elder community, who seem to take a great venomous delight in keeping the young from having a mind and spirit of their own, he manages to set his parish at odds with each other.
From the distressing sight of a young girl being cruelly beaten by her father to the pleasure of seeing a group of people listening to the new records that captured the Jazz age in America, the dichotomy of life in Ireland between 1923 and 1933 is framed with a tender and loving arm by Ken Loach, Barry Ward, Simone Kirby and the entire cast that make this film such an important reminder of everyone has a story to tell. If we as a society don’t allow that voice to be heard, then further resentments and distrust builds to a crescendo of hatred, violence and death. Even if you disagree with the voice, you cannot deny its existence.
As James Gralton tried to show the hand of reconciliation to the Church and Father Sheridan and was met with slurs and ferocious and near-deadly cynicism towards his peaceful Communist path, the voice will not be denied, even when placed 3,000 miles from home.
Jimmy’s Hall is one of the films that as any film goer you wish they had made before they did, it might have spoke to many sooner.
Ian D. Hall