Jimmy’s Hall and Catholic history
Ken Loach’s latest film, Jimmy’s Hall (cert. 12A), may be his last. At 77, he says the work involved, especially on location shoots, is getting a bit much.
I happened to get in the mood before the show researching a time when Chartists rolled up in churches in August 1839, having given the parson notice of their intention, and asking for a sermon either on “A rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven” or “Ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you”. Some clergy responded kindly, others less so – including the Bishop of Norwich who, having offered the view that only the rich could fulfil Christ’s command to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, was a couple of years later met at the consecration of a new church at New Catton with a shower of stones and half-bricks.
Fast forward a century to 1930s Ireland and a true story where the threat to the church – the Roman Catholic church – came from a communist whose main offence was to open a community hall and hold dances and educational classes. James Gralton (Barry Ward) emigrated to the USA in 1909, returned to fight for Irish independence, and in the film returns again to rural Leitrim to look after his ageing mother (Aileen Henry).
The old corrugated iron hall stands empty but, pressed by young people in the town, Jimmy reopens it, augmenting traditional Irish dancing with the latest jazz music and dance moves from America. Father Sheridan (Jim Norton) leads the opposition – partly because Jimmy is a communist, partly because it’s just not under church control.
It’s based on Donal O’Kelly’s play, but Paul Laverty’s script tends toward set-piece political argument. Fresh in
Bread in Roses (2001), and pertinent in The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006), here it sounds forced (and for left-wing cinema speeches, the standard is still Pete Postlethwaite’s rage against Thatcher in Brassed Off).
There are side-issues of land use – independence had not ended class distinctions or disparity of wealth, or justice, and the Garda can be relied on to support the church and the landowners. It still seems barely credible that a community hall, and W B Yeats appreciation classes, could prompt so much antipathy from the church.
Taking the names of attendees at a dance and denouncing them from the pulpit, Fr Sheridan puts his authority and that of the church on the line. Younger priest Fr Seamus (Andrew Scott) sees the futility of his senior’s stance, which just seems counterproductive.
Perhaps it adds to the knowingness of Father Ted (“Down with this sort of thing”) though thankfully Jim Norton rises above his previous priestly role as the sitcom’s Bishop Brennan, even as he invites his flock to choose between “a craze for pleasure” and “Irish values”. When he says it’s a choice between Christ or Gralton, any hope of compromise is gone, and physical threats to Jimmy and his hall become more serious.
Lingering feuds from the civil war (the one after independence, though Cromwell gets a mention), the IRA‘s role, and united catholic and protestant demonstrations in Belfast against the poor relief scheme, all form part of the history, without appearing too didactic. It’s still the exchanges between Gralton and Fr Sheridan that keep it going.
Gralton gets the better of these spats – his hall is “a holy place”, while the priest is killing the spirit with “miserable drabness” and has more hate than love in his heart. The best Sheridan can do is show a grudging admiration for his opponent, even as Gralton is threatened with deportation, as an alien in his native land.
Not one of Loach’s most potent films, it is a good drama, though how it relates to any current political situation is not that obvious. Unlike Peter Mullan’s The Magdalene Sisters (2002) or Stephen Frears’ Philomena last year, it just seems about times past.
It would be a shame if Loach’s last film is about something that doesn’t really matter much after all this time. When benefit changes and the iniquitous bedroom tax are providing plenty of material now to get outraged about, surely there’s a more relevant cause for our greatest social realism film-maker.