Mein Name ist Joe

The awesome realism of "Once Were Warriors" (New Zealand, 1994), successfully transposed to Glasgow, Scotland.

Solid, decent human beings use alcohol and drugs to "cope" with life. But, life only gets worse, loyalties are brutally tested, and one poor unfortunate will not survive. But, don't think this to be another flaccid piece of cliched, anti-drug drivel. No, this film speaks powerfully to the perverse, and often vicious, arbitrariness of life. Darwinians, of course, will be unmoved. The rest of us, however, will be chilled by the scale of our impotence in making this world a better place. Prepare yourself to feel humbled.

Believe me as soon this movie has ended it will be damned difficult not to reach for your handkerchief and not to dry your eyes as this movie really touches you, and director Ken Loach doesn't even need no Titanic-script as according to his style he just picks out some stories of life. We are in Glasgow, Scotland at where we meet Joe (Peter Mullan), an ex-alcoholic who is on the dole and whose sole surviving point is the footballteam (that always loose) he manages. It's more friendship then football but out of a sudden he meets a nurse Sarah (Louise Goodall) and he falls in love. For Sarah it is quite difficult, she loves him but she can't get used to the world Joe lives in, a world that is dominated by poverty. Everything goes badly wrong when Joe decides to help one of his footballplayers Liam (David McKay) who is a junk and who is in the hands of the mob that are awaiting 2000 pounds from him. Little by little Joe is witnessing that he looses everything that he build up the day he said the bottle farewell. This is not Loach's most known film (I guess that is Raining Stones) but this movie really had its impact on the festival of Cannes and it made a sort of indiestar from actor Peter Mullan who recently made his debut as director making "The Magdalene Sisters". Along with Mike Leigh is Loach one of the best British directors ever, a film you absolutely must see!!!!

That sense of what people can only look at and see with their own naked eyes and that of the stone wall truth lurking beneath is at the heart of Ken Loach's utterly mesmerising film My Name is Joe, a sentiment epitomised much later on when a bus load of Japanese tourists are seen to be visiting the nation of Scotland and ogle over what one might describe as a stereotypical Scotsman dancing away in his kilt whilst playing the bagpipes. The film's lead, a man who has taken a fair few knocks in his time, looks on at those embracing the outer-shell without, it would seem, giving much of a thought to anything else. You wouldn't know that Joe, the titular lead, was once an embittered and thoroughly foul individual whose turning to drink had him become a bit of a monster without a scene in which he confirms such a thing. The film is about alcoholism, but not the descent into it as much as it is the tale of somebody who has been there; defeated it and then strives to hold it off again on the way back up. In a sense, the film adopts that of the complexion of something along the lines of Carlito's Way but does for addiction what said De Palma film did for crime whereas its veering away from the depiction of someone (usually a young person, or a collection of young people) getting caught up in drugs and drug addiction has it feel eminently more refreshing away from British fare of around the time in Trainspotting and Human Traffic or from across the Atlantic in Requiem for a Dream.

That notion, harking back to those tourists and the distinction between what people can only see and what the reality of someone or something actually is, lies in Peter Mullan's Joe Kavanagh, a rough and ready individual who redecorates houses for a living; plays his football at weekends and sticks to the tried and tested items of leisure from his era, in the form of music from decades ago. The fact he was once the monster that he was becomes more apparent when we realise anyone in the world would far prefer him the way he is now compared to then, and yet brief descriptions of the man still has him sound like the sort of person most would cross the street if it meant avoiding walking past him. The film begins with a man's verbal confirmation of what an alcoholic is; the verbal closing of a particular chapter in his life and then a getting up and exiting of a room full of people to a round of applause from all involved. It is our Joe, and he has just attended his last alcoholic support group therapy session having been declared as to have defeated the condition and thus, free to go on living away from therapy attendance.

Thus starts a 'beginning again'; a new chapter and a new lease of life beginning with this point, a line from Joe during a chess match with one of his many friends seeing him state that he has "absolutley nothing" and is generally on the bottom rung of whatever ladder encompasses this time and place. Hiding behind his quick wit and cynicism, Joe keeps male company that isn't necessarily of the most resounding sort, and sees him able to wind them up them by instigating a mock-police raid prior to knocking on the front door – their reactions of leaping out of windows and doing everything in their power to escape speaks volumes. They play football at weekends and shout and jeer and swear, they even steal brand new football kits from the rear of sports shops when it becomes apparent they need new ones as people unload the things from lorries. Throughout, Loach's style, indebted to cinema vérité, props up proceedings and compliments greatly the material throughout.

At the core of the film is a relationship Joe finds himself in with a woman of his age named Sarah (Goodall), a social worker who operates with children that are under a great deal of strain thus coming across as someone adept at dealing with those of whom are a little problematic; a tad difficult to initially get to grips with and someone, we feel, with an enormous amount of patience in this regard – characteristics which bode well for her bond with Joe. While she doesn't understand, nor is particularly fond of, football and he doesn't go anywhere near the wine that she enjoys drinking with her dinner, these two come together and share something special which is introduced; developed and generally depicted with near effortless precision and finesse.

Around at Joe's apartment for one evening, she observes a group of youths casually enjoying alcohol on a local green outside his window and we get a general sense that this is where Joe was as a young man. Their tryst is a pleasing addition to Joe's constant combating of veering too far back towards old habits, his relationship with Sarah the opportunity for redemption in maintaining a relationship with a woman after it is revealed what previously happened. There are, of course, events and people around the lead whom drag him ever closer back to his pits of despair and disaster; the crime genre aspect of the film as a young hothead struggles with an outstanding debt compliments, more-so sits unsettlingly, with the lighthearted and comedic strand following the fortunes of a hapless football eleven as well as the romance with Sarah. One cannot speak highly enough of this wondrous piece, an intelligent and well made film those of whom enjoy their drama grounded and adult and their characterisation rich and textured.

Joe (Peter Mullan) is a guy who has seen it all before. A former alcoholic, he kicked his habit. Now he is unemployed but is paradoxically very active since he trains a little football team and interests himself in young Liam who has a brush with the local underground for a story of unpaid drugs with his young spouse Sabine. He falls in love with Sarah, a social worker who brings them help and support. The two people fall in love whereas to help Liam, Joe is ready to break the law and to do shady jobs for the mobsters. Will his relationship with Sarah be affected by this?

When he places his camera in the popular neighborhoods of a big city eaten away by unemployment, Ken Loach is the defender of the outcasts who are very strongly linked by friendship and mutual support, like Joe here with his tiny football team. Loach refuses to feel pity for them and shots the outset of his film with energy and generosity. Where he also grabs the audience and impresses her is his master at supple cinematographic writing. "My Name is Joe" starts up first time with a humorist perspective that the filmmaker will try to keep to the maximum. You have to see Joe and his sidekick who pretend to be professional house painters to Sarah's. Then, as Liam and Sabine's trouble grow and with Joe's decision to help them, the tone becomes darker, blacker and is here to remind us that we are in Loach's universe. His characters in spite of their big efforts are caught up in a sad fate. In the end, Loach runs the whole gamut of tones with ability in a quite gloomy plot.

The arresting performance of Peter Mullan helps to make Loach's 1998 film more appealing and it's one to discover or rediscover.

A review of this film in the Telegraph asks, "Why do people go to see Ken Loach films?" I would suggest that people go to see Ken Loach films because they're interested in society, interested in how people live, and keen to see films about REAL people i.e. people who aren't rich and beautiful and don't live in charming pieds a terre in Chelsea ... My Name is Joe is at the same time heartwarming and heartbreaking, making you feel good about the characters whilst thanking your lucky stars that you don't live the lives they do. Go and see it with an open mind and a thirst for realism.