INTRODUCTION

The first Ken Loach film I saw was Land and Freedom, in 1996. It moved me deeply, and since then, it always remained one of my favourite films. What stroke me most was this ability to move people to tears, and at the same time generate an energy and anger that makes you feel you can change the world.

What interested me from the very beginning was Loach's capacity to link random, individual stories to historical and cultural common realities. These stories are all the more powerful that they are rooted in an environment known to viewers. Loach plays with the limits between fiction and reality. To me, this is what makes his fictions so unique.

What are Loach's films famous for? For their controversial content, their political implication, their criticism of capitalist societies. Who would feel indifferent at the end of any of Loach's movies? They always give enough material to ponder over the questions that are raised.

He acknowledges himself that he is very interested in class-struggle, in the evolution of socialism during the course of history. [1]   Still, the focus on stories of people randomly picked up betrays a keen interest in individuals. It seems that according to Loach, individuals need to become aware of the problems that surround them by themselves. It becomes thus clear that Loach considers men as a construction, evolving along with cultures and history. The use of the word “constructing” may seem a little odd when associated with “individuals”, but Loach himself uses the metaphor (the building site) in one of his film, Riff-Raff (1991), to convey the evolution of the workers. I will not narrow my study to a limited number of films, because this study also aims  at showing an evolution in Loach’s whole fictional work.  

Viewers are often asked, through characters, their opinion about their place in the society they belong to; how they view it, or what they think their role is. I found it very interesting to begin with a confrontation of Loach's films with existentialism. Indeed, existentialist thinkers sought to determine man’s position in the world and his active part in it. Once the existentialist trend is acknowledged, I will study the theme of happiness, as it is closely linked with the status men give themselves in their societies: In every Loach’s films, characters are struggling for a representation of happiness(a Communion dress, a kestrel…), but they find it hard to reach it because of things that do not always depend on them. In the third part, I will try to show that happiness is also a matter of gender; men and women are depicted in different ways, and yet Loach does not make this issue political. How is it? As he has been making films for almost forty years, how does he show the evolution of both sexes? This will lead to the fourth part: how does Loach link personal memories to cultural, social and historical realities?

[1] In Fuller, Graham(ed), Loach on Loach, London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1998