Ladybird Ladybird opens with actor Crissy Rock’s character “Maggie” giving the performance of a lifetime: her version of Bette Midler’s “The Rose”. “Maggie” is giving this performance everything she’s got. What the audience sees is a dynamically-moving, weary-eyed delivery of this (let’s face it) kind of corny old song. Rock too is giving the performance of a lifetime, showing the spectator everything they need to know about this character in the span of just a few well-chosen moments. That is if they are paying attention. “Maggie” exists in the minutiae of Ken Loach’s deceptively realistic world as presented on screen.

No other director has become so synonymous with the working class as Loach, yet his films retain a fairytale-like quality that works almost in direct opposition to his dedication to authenticity. In films such as Ladybird Ladybird these elements work together seamlessly, woven together by Rock’s daring, risky turn. “Maggie” is a real woman, a believable, three-dimensional creation, and Rock is not just an actress pretending to be one. Her own background, filled with startling abuse insured the kind of authenticity that viewers had come to expect from a Loach film.

My Name is Joe should be remembered for a few things. It’s touching story. The stalwart direction of Ken Loach.  The cold, dark, and straight-forward visual palette befitting its blue collar central character. Most of all, though, it should be remembered for Peter Mullan’s tragic turn as the titular Joe.

Mullan embodies Joe and all of his contradictory traits from the get go. The film begins with an AA meeting where Joe is recounting his story to the group. He starts by discussing his initial feelings of denial regarding his condition, and as an audience we’re not sure where we are just yet. As he comes around to reality, so do we. He pushes past his denial into admission without much of a reason for the transition, and we realize he’s in a meeting talking to people just like him.

Perhaps Ken Loach’s most well known film, the 2006 international hit The Wind That Shakes the Barley could also be seen as his most ambitious. Set during the Irish War of Independence and then the Irish Civil War, Loach’s film is an unequivocally substantial story for locals and foreigners alike. There are gunfights, high-level government meetings, and plenty of other sets, characters, and actions that many would picture requiring a big budget.

Yet the director known for his hard-and-fast shooting style keeps his methods intact, and the picture benefits all the more from his approach. It helps that Paul Laverty’s touching script focuses on two brothers who become fed up with the crown’s oppression. Laverty and Loach, long-term collaborators who the latter described as “filmmakers” above all else, find the intimate parts of the story and maximize them in a way that conveys both the national and familial consequences.

The Angels’ Share blends many serious issues with fantastical, mythical elements. Do you always plan for it to be lighter than your other works, or did it come about through the writing?

Paul Laverty: That was a great challenge. It was a difficulty trying to make it seamless. You’ve got to try to plan that and think it out very carefully. The film before was a very tough tragedy. Lives fell apart. It was a very dark, dark tragedy. You’ve always got to be truthful to the premise of the story.

For decades, Ken Loach has remained one of the most politically-minded filmmakers; his films themselves, almost never deal specifically with politics, but the characters in question, are always affected by social inequity, therefore turning his movies into heartfelt, but objective, socio political essays.

Trying to peg what is it that makes a Ken Loach movie, “a Ken Loach movie” is quite hard, given that he never relies on stylistic choices to help us determine his auteurship. Yet, once we’re watching the action unfold, the characters evolve in front of us and the plot take a turn towards the bittersweet, we know it…this is why The Angel’s Share feels so confusing at first. 

Loach’s movies are never really funny, but there is a deep humanism in them that unavoidably leads to moments that make us laugh. The Angel’s Share in fact begins like most of his movies: we meet a down on his luck man named Robbie (Paul Brannigan), who on the very first scene gets sentenced to providing hours of community service for a small crime.