Meu Nome é Joe

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.

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.

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.

First this movie seems to be much lighter than previous Loach realisations (remember LadyBird, LadyBird ?). Joe is a hell of a good guy and the other characters are as true as possible. And it is truly funny (the football matches of the "German" team are hilarious). But then, like in many of the best Loach movies, the social reality, with all its dramatic aspects, turns the end of the movie into a real tragedy. A must, in my opinion.

Ken Loach is a truly exceptional film-maker. Like Bunuel, he has seemingly risen from the dead (during Thatcher's reign) and re-emerged as an international force. I found his latest film "My name is Joe" to be a hugely enjoyable affair, perhaps a little less abrasive and direct than his earlier efforts, like "Poor cow" and "Family life". Even so, he depicts "working class"- people with the same warmth and insight as before.

The main character is Joe, a jobless reformed alcoholic in Glasgow with a heart of gold. In the attempt to better the lot of those around him, (and forget his self-loathing) Joe organizes a football team and makes house-calls on those in need of support, especially Liam and Sabine, a young couple in dire straits. Liam owes 500 pounds to the local drug-dealer, and Sabine has likewise racked up a debt. Joe tries his best to offer help, but when he is forced to perform a criminal act, he runs the risk of losing his law-abiding girl-friend into the bargain.

Joe is a character whom you instantly like. Even his transgressions won't make you think the worse of him, as he quite obviously suffers from what he's done. Joe wants to lead a "normal" life, stay on the right side of the law, get a girlfriend and what have you. But he just can't juggle off his past as a drunkard, he can't get off the dole and so hasn't the means to move away from his run-down apartment, his rotten little suburb. His only hope is to get someone to love him, someone to lift him out of the rut, to boost his self-esteem.

It is, for sure, a touching, humane story, beautifully scripted, shot in a simple style, and with a wonderful central performance by Peter Mullan. My question is, is it more? Is MNIJ a valid comment on deprived communities in Britain today? Do there still exist working class ethics like the ones Loach depicts in this movie? And are they still as relevant as when Britain was poor back in the 60' ies, the decade of Loach's first movies?

Granted, there are still poor, neglected people aplenty, but do they behave like this? This movie seems a little on the soft side compared to say Gillian MacKinnon's "Small faces", and even "Trainspotting". "MNIJ, I feel, is more of a self-contained Chekhovian drama than an attack on our bourgeois sensibilities.

(The soundtrack, by the way, consists mostly of dangerously out-dated glam-rock material from the 70' ies. Painful stuff!) Call me flippant, but I didn't feel like hitting a drug dealer, or tearing the social fabric after watching this movie. Perhaps it should have hurt more. Even so, it's a fabulous film by a unique director.