Socialist crusader vs. powers that be

“Jimmy’s Hall,” Ken Loach’s loving dramatization of the life and times of the Irish communist James “Jimmy” Gralton, begins with jumpy blackand-white archival footage of Depression-era New York. Cut to the lush green of County Leitrim, and a country road where a gaggle of folk merrily dance a jig.

Well, they’d be merrier if someone would reopen the old dance hall in Effrinagh. It was what we call a community center now, and the community loved it. The church leaders and the landowners? Not so much.

Down that road comes Jimmy Gralton (Barry Ward), returning home from 10 years in the States. He’s asked if he would swing the doors of the hall open again. And he does. But because the talk sometimes turns to politics, to fair wages, the local Catholic priest ( Jim Norton) and the landed gentry set out to close the place for good.

But the meetings between the socialist crusader and Father Sheridan aren’t simply canned conversations of good vs. evil; the right and earnest against the powerful and wrong.

There’s humanity here, on all sides, and a gentle wisdom beneath the raging rhetoric.