{"id":4,"date":"2012-10-06T16:29:19","date_gmt":"2012-10-06T16:29:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.florenciopaiva.com\/?p=4"},"modified":"2012-10-06T16:30:48","modified_gmt":"2012-10-06T16:30:48","slug":"interview-with-ken-loach-for-his-film-road-irish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.florenciopaiva.com\/?p=4","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Ken Loach for his Film “Road Irish”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"With<\/a>
With Ken Loach<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Unlike some of your recent previous films, you chose to center the action in Road Irish on one character…<\/em><\/p>\n

We\u2019ve done a number of films that are about groups, about collectives. We did one about the Spanish Civil War, one in Nicaragua. They involved true groups, because I think solidarity is one of the most undervalued attributes for a person to have, a sense of solidarity. We\u2019ve done a number of film dealing with groups, not with just one person. But this was a really difficult film to imagine, because we wanted to deal, not only with the Iraq war, but with the privatization of war, and the consequences of war. How to do that? To find a way into that was very difficult. So Paul Laverty wrote the character of Fergus, and within Fergus it contains all of the contradictions of a man who was a regular soldier and becomes a private contractor, that means he works as a mercenary, really, for a private contracting company. He\u2019s done things that are really shameful. And he\u2019s in a world of greed, of corruption, of brutality that has changed him, changed him from the boy he was to the man he is now; it\u2019s a terrible downward spiral. So a way into that seems to be exploring the psychology of this guy who has become a killer, and the tragedy is the destruction of his former self. The way into that seems to be into an individual\u2019s journey. You could do a film about Iraq about a group of Iraqis, that\u2019s probably the best film to make, about a family, a street, a group of Iraqis, what the American ambitions have done to them. But we couldn\u2019t do that, you know, we don\u2019t know the language, we don\u2019t understand the culture. The best for us was through this psychological unraveling.<\/p>\n

Your main character works as well as a window of the society he comes from…<\/em><\/p>\n

He\u2019s a working class guy and he\u2019s friend that has been killed is also working class. They\u2019re the kind of people who become soldiers. They didn\u2019t have much future when they left school, and the army promised a life of adventure, so they become soldiers. And the becoming of professional soldier has changed because you go to different places where there\u2019s conflict, you have people at the end of the sight of your gun, and you may\u2026 shoot them. The one question we were told to never ask a soldier is, have you ever killed anyone? Because is not something they want to revisit. So he\u2019s done things like that. And then, working in Iraq at a time when there\u2019s a huge amount of money going around; that\u2019s a situation where ex-soldier could make a lot of money by being mercenaries, and that\u2019s corrupt. So it is the degeneration of a lad who was a bright youth into a man who has nothing to live for.<\/p>\n

Do you think that war could be justified?<\/em><\/p>\n

I think, I mean, war is politics by other means, isn\u2019t it? So I think there are times when people have to fight. I think the fight that the Spanish Republicans fought against the Fascists was a fight they had to fight. The fight of the Nicaraguans against the American sponsored terrorists, the Contras, was a fight the Nicaraguans had to fight. But the acting of killing another human being is always diminishing, isn\u2019t it? Is always terrible, I don\u2019t know, I\u2019m never been in a position that I have to do it; but I also think that If it has to be fought it has to be fought.\u00a0 Think there\u2019s no question that it was right to fight Hitler.\u00a0 It was right to fight the Contras, for example. There are wars in other parts of the world that had to be fought because otherwise there would be a world of fascism.<\/p>\n

What’s the responsibility of the filmmaker when portraying violent acts?<\/em><\/p>\n

I think what is irresponsible is to make a film in which the violence becomes exciting and you don\u2019t know why people are fighting. Very few wars are justified. The Iraq war was illegal, it was brutal, it was a war waged by criminals, Blair, Bush and co. they did criminal activity for which they should be brought to trial. Very few wars are just wars. I think there are two responsibilities. First of all is don\u2019t make the violence glamour, don\u2019t put it in slow motion, don\u2019t see the blood spurting out in an unrealistic way. Don\u2019t glamorize violence. But also, more important than the violence is why the war is being fought. You got to evaluate the reason for fighting.<\/p>\n

I wanted to ask you about your naturalistic style.<\/em><\/p>\n

I think the real experience is always more interesting than the inflated performance an actor can sometimes give. I think is important also that the audience can believe in the character that you see. They believe the character in the film can be that character. If you got a very well known star you remember the other parts, you remember the personality of the actor. For me is much more interesting to tangle with real experiences. A sense that what you\u2019re watching could really happen and you\u2019re just observing it rather than being in it, making it melodramatic, making it operatic, putting a lot of music on. What people really do is always much more interesting, much more surprising.<\/p>\n

How to reconcile the artifice of drama with that naturalistic approach mostly concerned with the problems in our society?<\/em><\/p>\n

Well I think drama is based on conflict\u2026 And what has inspired \u2013me and the writers I have worked with- is not people as isolated individuals, but people within a social context. How they earn their living, how\u2019s the world they live in, what\u2019s their family, what\u2019s their job, what\u2019s the relationship with their wife, with their husband, with their children, or their parents. It\u2019s that very concrete context in which we live, that determines who we are, how we see ourselves. And then you find that the conflicts are really a struggle for what\u2019s right, for a lot of people. One of the extraordinary sense of history, I suppose, is that study of conflict for people, of conflicting class senses. That\u2019s a situation we\u2019re in on many levels now, always have. It’s like a struggle between different interests. And within that with individuals, within their own context, with their own stories. So I suppose \u2013and it\u2019s a rather long answer- is about trying to put people into the context, the social context of their lives, and then seeing the wider conflicts that they\u2019re in.<\/p>\n

As a filmmaker who started in the sixties, within the ‘new ‘waves’, do you think that film can still change the world?<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s just a medium, really, film it\u2019s just a medium and it\u2019s bound by the consciousness of the person who\u2019s operating the camera or making the film. You wouldn\u2019t expect a revolution of consciousness to develop just because you have a camera. A revolution of consciousness develops because the struggle you\u2019re in, because the conflicts you\u2019re in.\u00a0 I think the battle for revolutionary consciousness is one the big questions, permanent questions. A camera can help you to agitate, to explain things, to capture things. But it can\u2019t by itself give you revolutionary consciousness.<\/p>\n

Handling an instrument of agitation could be a great responsibility…<\/em><\/p>\n

I guess the responsibility is, first of all, to understand. And to\u2026 maybe that sounds too difficult; maybe your first responsibility is just to your friends at work and to your neighbors to make things better, because that will draw you into politics, and that will draw you into consciousness. But if somebody cut your wages you have a responsibility to fight back. If somebody closes your school you got a responsibility to fight back. If somebody cut your wages, sacks your neighbor or sacks you, then you have to organize and fight back. Those are the grass roots battles that step by step will develop a consciousness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Unlike some of your recent previous films, you chose to center the action in Road Irish on one character… We\u2019ve done a number of films that are about groups, about collectives. We did one about the Spanish Civil War, one in Nicaragua. They involved true groups, because I think solidarity is one of the most… Continue reading Interview with Ken Loach for his Film “Road Irish”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[8,5,4,7,6],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.florenciopaiva.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.florenciopaiva.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.florenciopaiva.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.florenciopaiva.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.florenciopaiva.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.florenciopaiva.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36,"href":"http:\/\/www.florenciopaiva.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4\/revisions\/36"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.florenciopaiva.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/45"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.florenciopaiva.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.florenciopaiva.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.florenciopaiva.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}