オールド・オーク / The Old Oak

​かつて炭鉱の活気に満ちていた北イングランドの町。その面影は薄れ、人々の心にはいつしか余裕よりも苛立ちが積もっている。そんな町で、古びたパブ「オールド・オーク」だけが、辛うじて人と人をつなぐ場所であり続けてきた。店主のTJは、シリアから逃れてきた難民たちと地元住民の間で板挟みになりながらも、カメラを手にした若い女性ヤラとの出会いを通じて、忘れかけていた何かを取り戻そうとする。ケン・ローチが長年見つめてきたのは、制度でも政策でもなく、追いつめられた人間がそれでも誰かに手を差し伸べようとする瞬間だ。怒りと優しさが同じ根を持つことを、この静かな物語はそっと教えてくれる。

​Ken Loach has spent six decades finding the political in the personal, and this, his announced final film, carries the full weight of that accumulated conviction. Set in a hollowed-out former mining village in County Durham, it follows TJ Ballantyne — quietly, devastatingly played by Dave Turner — as he tends bar in the last pub still standing, a building that holds the memory of solidarity in its very walls. When Syrian refugees arrive and are met with suspicion, fear, and barely concealed hostility from some locals, TJ finds himself caught between the community he has always known and a humanity that transcends it. Ebla Mari brings luminous dignity to Yara, a young Syrian woman with a camera and an instinct for connection. Loach and longtime screenwriter Paul Laverty resist easy resolutions, trusting instead in small gestures — shared meals, opened doors, a room given back its purpose. Tender and unsparing in equal measure, The Old Oak asks, with quiet urgency, what remains when everything else has been taken.