Jimmy's Hall is the latest and likely the last major work of cinema fiction from the great British naturalist film genius Ken Loach. In it, a young Irishman is persecuted and deported from the Emerald Isle back to America for the crime of gifting his people a dance hall in which to play, drink and cavort. Why was this gift considered a crime most foul? In the eyes of the folks who ruled Ireland, namely the local Catholic Bishop, the landlords and the auxiliary police nicknamed "the Black and Tans," Jimmy Gralton (Barry Ward) was at best a troublemaker, a pesky gadfly, at worst the kind of rebellious hooligan who could incite the common folks �" landless migrant workers, poor tenant farmers, free-thinking women �" to disobey their betters and perhaps turn the newly created Irish Free State into a rain-soaked version of a Russian-style Soviet.
Fans of the self-described Marxist filmmaker Ken Loach (born in Nuneaton, England, in 1936) are likely breaking out in hot sweats in anticipation of a last summing-up work from the guy who brought them 2002's Sweet Sixteen, about the pratfalls of a Scottish teen whose accent is so thick that Loach supplied English subtitles; and 2006's The Wind That Shakes the Barley, with an incomparably tragic turn from Irish heartbreaker Cillian Murphy. Does Jimmy's Hall measure up to the Ken Loach standard of mixing politics and a sublime brand of naturalistic acting? Almost. It never reaches The Wind That Shakes the Barley's throat-clutching plot turns or ultimate heartbreak when the loveliest man in the world (the fair-skinned Murphy) allows himself to assassinated by his own brother for the cause of a free Ireland. But Jimmy's Hall does carry the struggle from the early 1920s through the even more tumultuous 30s, when the crushing poverty induced by the Great Depression caused even the most militantly socialist disciples some soul-shaking late-night angst.
I don't think I've ever insisted that there should be a college course-like requirement that my readers see another film to prepare themselves for the one I'm reviewing, but this time I think it would greatly increase your enjoyment of Jimmy's Hall, opening Friday at San Francisco's Landmark Embarcadero Cinema, and on July 17 in Berkeley, if you took, rented or streamed The Wind That Shakes the Barley first. Loach and his veteran screenwriter Paul Laverty construct believable scenes where every possible political point of view is elucidated precisely but in down-to-earth language. You not only get where people are coming from, but can sense the deadly consequences when former comrades turn their arms on each other. The photography eloquently understates the landscape's seductive beauty. This is not Disney's Emerald Isle, or even John Ford's.
Previously seen as the flirtatious Patrick "Kitten" Braden, the cross-dressing devil in search of freedom and a Mitzi Gaynor look-alike mom in Neil Jordan's Breakfast on Pluto, in Barley Cillian Murphy is transcendent as an idealist who sticks to his guns regardless of personal cost. A pivotal scene that cuts to the core of this film's vise-like grip on our emotions features Murphy's Damien grieving for a deed he has not yet committed: the execution of a childhood friend for betraying the rebels. Staggering across rugged country as if drunk with grief, holding a loaded pistol towards the chest of another as if pressed towards his own, Murphy manages with agonized body language to convey all the horrible, irreparable damage of war, then adds this blunt admission: "I studied anatomy for five years. Now I'm going to shoot Chris Reilly in the heart. I hope this Ireland we're fighting for is worth it."