Jimmy’s Hall *** (2014, dir Ken Loach) – Movie Review

Barry Ward stars as real-life Irish communist political activist Jimmy Gralton, who is deported from Ireland during the country’s ‘Red Scare’ of the 1930s. Ward is excellent but Jim Norton is even better as his nemesis, Father Sheridan, severe guardian of the traditional Roman Catholic values.

The rural dance hall he and his comrades rebuild is not much more than a large wood and corrugated iron shed created on land on a County Leitrim village that’s built on your typical Irish bog. But it represents teaching, learning, art, singing, dancing and music – some of it that terrible, corrupting American jazz, not your proper decent traditional Irish folk tunes. It is a centre mainly for young people, but open to all and free. It has to be said of course that Gralton is also using the hall to expound his political views.

In 1932, Gralton returns after living in America for ten years to live back in his native Ireland with his old mammy and help her run the family farm. Though reluctant to stir up his old enemies among the Church and the local landowners, he is persuaded to reopen the hall. It’s an instant success, but Jimmy’s radical ideas incur the wrath and enmity of Sheridan, who involves the coppers and locals in his battle against Jimmy and his hall.

With an expert, literate screenplay by Loach’s regular collaborator Paul Laverty, based on a play by Donal O’Kelly, Loach’s tale of the only Irishman ever to be expelled from his home country as an illegal alien is entertaining, informative and touching. It’s a shade on thin and mild side, especially for a Ken Loach film, but it’s warm, intelligent and good-hearted, which makes up for it. So does the acting: Ward  is charming, Norton is chilling and Simone Kirby is affecting as Gralton’s girlfriend Oonagh.

The 78-year-old Loach has announced his retirement, but he is one of our few national treasure directors and needs to do at least one more film like Hidden Agenda (1990), Sweet Sixteen (2002) or The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006).

(C) Derek Winnert 2014 Movie Review

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