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LAND AND FREEDOM (1995) - d. Ken Loach
This was the film that really put Ken Loach - the English filmmaker who made his initial mark in the 1960s - back on the map. During the early 1990s, Loach was on a creative roll, turning out 'Riff-Raff,' 'Raining Stones,' and 'Ladybird, Ladybird,' in short succession. By mid-decade, perhaps on the strength of 'Ladybird' (a truly great movie), people were starting to pay attention to Loach again, and when 'Land and Freedom' arrived, it managed to find a substantial audience. Substantial, at least, by the standards of English-language Spanish Civil War epics beholden to ideas, idealism, and how political differences can quickly obscure a goal as vital as freedom. If there's one thing 'Land and Freedom' isn't, it isn't 'For Whom the Bell Tolls.'
Even where he finds critical success, Loach's films can be a difficult sell. The director's fiercely leftist agenda would be challenge enough, but Loach is to medicinal (if high-quality) filmmaking what Michael Moore is to self-love. While Moore is, often rightly, pilloried for putting himself front and center, Loach is the guy who makes boring movies that only a Marxist could love. Whether it's impossible accents ('My Name is Joe,' 'Sweet Sixteen'), browbeating leftist-speak ('Bread and Roses,' 'The Navigators') or the occasional 'huh?' ('Fatherland,' 'Black Jack'), the films of Ken Loach never run out of ways to confound a viewer. Try making it through the first 30 minutes of 'Bread and Roses' and tell me different.
And yet, this guy's been regularly churning out movies since the early 60s, and the financial well still draws water. Kind of makes you think he's doing something right.
Loachy-poo.
Fierce political commentary always has a place in British society, and the British film industry bears no exception. Loach, through equal parts craft and longevity, has become a poster-boy for political thinking writ in celluloid. He's certainly the dominant English purveyor of his era. For all of the agendaneering - and we're talking about the maker of a documentary called 'A Contemporary Case for Common Ownership' - the director, more often than not, makes things work. He's been behind the camera long enough that he knows just how much politicking viewers can stand and most of the time manages keep himself from reaching that breaking point. He has an exceptional talent for scripts and casting; his performers, both professional and amateur, find ways to make even thankless roles appealing (see Robert Carlyle's performances in 'Carla's Song' and 'Riff-Raff'). He has a terrific, if understated, sense of humor - 'Raining Stones' is a heartbreaker, but also a good example of the director's ability to find humor in the bleakest places. Most important of all, Ken Loach has a big, sloppily-bleeding heart.
He's kept something of a harem of writers over the years - often turning to like-minded playwrights and novelists to adapt their own work - but many of his best films have come from the pens of Paul Laverty and Jim Allen. Allen wrote ‘Land and Freedom’, and though 'Hidden Agenda' (another Allen script) was the Jury Prize winner at Cannes in 1990, this is a far more accomplished work. I imagine it must be tiring writing for Loach - as opposed to say, Hitchcock or Wilder - what with all the monologues and anti-establishment harangues you're expected to squeeze in. But most of the time, Allen gets it right. As an example, there's a particularly long scene in the middle of the film where the locals go on and on about collectivism and land rights. It should be as much fun as a moonshine enema, but the enthusiasm of the performers and the quality of the words turn the scene into a highlight.
'Land and Freedom' is set during the Spanish Civil War, a conflict that lasted between 1936 and 1939. Said war broke out because the Popular Front, a loose collective of about 400,000 left-wing organizations, won general elections and the right to govern in '36, leading the conservatives to decide that a military coup was in order. Franco's name is the one that people outside of Spain generally recognize, but Emilio Mola and José Sanjurjo were also big players on the Nationalist (conservative) side. To be entirely fair, a good number of Spaniards backed the coup at the time (these, I imagine, are the people whose descendants now sit in the Ultras sections of soccer stadiums and like to get in knife fights with one another after games). So yeah, violent coup, the Nationalists take Madrid - as well as every other major city - and the Popular Front was left in the countryside wondering just what the hell to do, especially since the Nationalists controlled the bulk of the Spanish army.
(Real) Marching in Madrid.
Elsewhere in Gotham:
On the heels of the Communist Revolution in Russia and the rise of fascism in Germany and Italy, intellectuals throughout Europe - both Communist and Social Democrats - were chomping at the bit for a place in the west to serve as a Marxist proving ground. Spain, the first country in Western Europe (ok, fine, the Iberian Peninsula) to democratically elect a neo-Socialist government, suddenly became the belle of the Marxist ball. But it wasn't just money that poured into Spain to support the Loyalist/Republican (read: leftist) cause; many of the same intellectuals who were starting trade unions and papers, promoting the idea of a Marxist utopia throughout their own countries, saw a war which was potentially winnable, and decided to ship out to Spain and fight for their beliefs. It sounds like an incredibly unselfish act, and it was, comparable to the way Americans enlisted in Europe before the United States officially entered the Second World War. The most stunning thing about the influx of foreigners - from literally all of Europe (throw in some Canadians and Americans, as well) - was just how many people came to Spain and put their lives on the line to fight the fascists. A long-term benefit of the war was that a large number of those foreigners, once peace was made in Spain, were far better prepared to fight in World War II. The resistance movement in France, for example, was primarily led by French Communists who originally fought in Spain.
This is where 'Land and Freedom' actually kicks in. Ian Hart, one of my favorite actors, plays a young, idealistic Scouser (aka Liverpudlian) Commie named Dave Carr, who ships out from England full of dreams and prole ambition, and is quickly plunged into a war which is nothing like he'd expected. I don't know that I want to talk too much about the plot other than to explain that the Loyalists' cause lost the war as much because of deep ideological rifts among its own ranks as anything Franco and his gang managed to do. Exploring the chaos of the Republican/Loyalist cause is the primary motivation of Loach and Allen, and with good reason, as it makes for good drama. The Loyalists were terribly undersupplied and their presence wasn't greeted with warmth in every town they traveled through, but the Nationalists were similarly undermanned, under-financed, and under-appreciated by their fellow countrymen (when is civil war ever popular?). Carr ends up with an organization called P.O.U.M. (something along the lines of People's Militia), fighting in an English-speaking regiment. As the war wears on, the Stalinist/Communist wing of the anti-Franco resistance starts to push its agenda and organization to the fore, and Carr - a devoted Communist - finds himself being pulled at all corners, by his allegiance to his fellow P.O.U.M. fighters, his allegiance to his political beliefs, and his allegiance to the idea of simply doing right. To their credit, the Communists have the nicer uniforms.
Anyhow, I really like this film. A lot. And, in truth, in spite of the constant parading of facts and politics, it's extremely watchable, and probably wouldn't ruffle too many feathers if, say, you were to watch it with your parents. For what it's worth, a lot of British Communists didn't like the film, feeling that it focused on the 'wrong' details of the war and failed to do the cause appropriate justice, which I think is a good thing. Loach and Allen never lose sight of the fact that the story they're telling is the story of a working-class English guy named Dave Carr, and Hart is so right-on, so pitch-perfect and utterly believable, that he more than holds the center. The Spanish actress Rosana Pastor also gives a great performance as Carr's love interest, sister-in-arms, and conscience.
I'm totally in agreement with a majority of critics who found the story's modern-era bracketing device unnecessary. I hate bracketing devices in general, and I'm not a fan of using one here. I think that the 'letters home' which served as narration should've stayed as is, and they'd have done well to skip the whole granddaughter/funeral/learning-to-love-the-party-by-reading-Pappy's-letters-home routine. With that minor alteration, the film would've been just that crucial bit shorter, and maybe just a shade more exotic.
I'm going to finish up now. I'm not in the practice of trying to write lengthy and coherent 'proper' reviews, and I've clearly done an awful job of it here, so it's time to pack it in. I'll finish with the following: This isn't a movie for everyone. The greatest risk you'll run is that of death by boredom, but that may say as much about you as it does the movie. If you're looking to dig in deep on the Spanish Civil War, I can't recommend anything out of Spain - either films or books - as Franco lived and ruled into the mid-70s and had a thing for controlling the media, but 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' is an obvious resource, and George Orwell's 'Homage to Catalonia' is my favorite of his writings - it's also a lot more romantic and a lot less boring than title suggests (also, it served as a clear reference point for Loach and Allen). Realistically, though, you can get most of what you need in 'Land and Freedom,' and there aren't too many movies which do this good a job of mixing politics with a story that's entertaining and actually worth following ('Z,' 'The Battle of Algiers'). If you have the chance, please give it a shot.
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