Butler's Cinema Scene

Barry Ward as Jimmy Gralton

“JIMMY’S HALL” My rating: A- 

109 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Brit filmmaker Ken Loach always has lept in where Hollywood fears to tread. For a quarter century he has been making overtly political films reflecting his leftist/humanist point of view. He’s never been a major box office force, but he’s always been a true artist.

“Jimmy’s Hall” is in many ways the perfect Loach film, a fact-based story depicting the external struggle of left-vs.-right without stooping to caricature or shrillness and overflowing with Irish song, dance and language.

Paul Laverty’s screenplay (based on Donal O’Kelly’s play) begins with the return to Ireland in 1932 of Jimmy Gralton (Barry Ward), who has spent the last decade in exile in New York City. As we see in flashbacks, at the time of “the troubles” Jimmy ran afoul of the authorities for operating a “hall” on his rural property, a place where local folk could go to take classes in art and music, discuss literature and politics, and hold community dances.

Doesn’t sound particularly insidious, but Jimmy’s sin was to run his hall free of the control of the Church,  for centuries (and for another 80 years) the dominant force in Irish life.

Once back in the neighborhood Jimmy is reunited with his mother (Aileen Henry) and with Oonagh (Simone Kirby), the girl he left behind who has since married and started a family. But it isn’t long before the rural folk are urging Jimmy to spruce up the dust-covered hall and start once again providing a place for common folk to gather  to expand their minds  and open their hearts.

Turns out that life in the new republic hasn’t improved appreciably for these hard-working but underemployed Irishmen. The owners of the big estates can still evict poor tenants for the slightest infraction or uppity behavior, and the Catholic Church — as embodied by Father Sheridan (Jim Norton) — once again is prepared to take on any challenge to its authority.

The film’s villains: masters and pastors.

Barry Ward, Simone Kirby

As he has shown in projects like “The Wind that Shakes the Barley” (Irish guerrillas fight to the oust the British) and “Land and Freedom” (the Spanish Civil War), Loach has an uncanny ability to recreate distant times and places on a poverty budget. Of course it’s not actually about how much money he has to spend but about how deeply Loach identifies with his characters and their dilemmas.

Here he perfectly balances the joys of Jimmy’s community hall — where young folk go to groove on their host’s jazz records and oldsters convene to spit and argue —  with the repression that was common in the early years of the Irish Republic.  Once the fight with the British had ended, the film tells us, a new fight began between right and left for power over the new government.

Jimmy’s Hall quickly becomes a sensation. Father Sheridan responds by taking the names of parishioners who visit the hall and then denouncing them in Sunday services. Education, he thunders, is the exclusive domain of Holy Mother Church. Jazz is the devil’s music, the hall is frequented by Communists, and worshippers must decide: “Is it Christ or Jimmy Gralton’s hall?”

As with any Loach film, there is room here for fiery political rhetoric, but there are also some astoundingly beautiful human moments. A scene in which Jimmy teaches local kids the dance steps he learned at NYC’s Savoy Ballroom practically explodes with youthful delight. And a moonlight dance between Jimmy and Oonagh — the woman he will always love but can never have — is just plain heartbreaking.

The acting is so low-keyed it’s almost not acting at all.  Ward has a look somewhere between romantic poet and craggy-featured farmer, and he exudes quiet dignity. But even his opposition, Father Sheridan, is played not as a monster but as a man of faith who believes every word he says.

Technically the film is first rate, particularly Robbie Ryan’s lush cinematography.

The real Jimmy Gralton didn’t enjoy a happy ending. But as illustrated by Ireland’s recent vote to recognize gay marriage, the Church’s power over civil affairs has withered away.

In the end, Jimmy Gralton won after all.

| Robert W. Butler