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Ken Loach – Cinematic Master

11.10.11

“It made me realise that cinema could be about ordinary people and their dilemmas. It wasn’t a film about stars, or riches or absurd adventures. I was able to see cinema in another light, outside the Hollywood nonsense.”

It is this vision that is evident in almost all of Loach’s work. Many of his stories are as simplistic as De Sica’s tale of a father and son looking for a lost bicycle, and the way he focuses on normal, working class people struggling to get through day to day life is so refreshing when viewed against so much of Hollywood’s bid-budget garbage. Loach is known for his strong socialist beliefs, and he has addressed all number of social issues during his long career, from homelessness and unemployment to domestic abuse and alcoholism, and more recently to the issues of war and immigration. While these issues may not appeal as interesting subject matter for many people, under Loach’s direction they make for compelling human dramas about contemporary British society. After all, what is the use of cinema if it cannot reflect the issues that really matter to the world we live in?

Source: The Film Pilgrim