Ken Loach couldn'thave gone out on a better note had Jimmy's Hall turned out to be his farewell fiction feature — as it was claimed to be before the social-realist British director announced a change of heart. As scripted by his long-time screenwriter Paul Laverty, this 1930s-set drama chronicling events leading to the deportation of a little-known, real-life Irish political activist is a graceful digest of Loach's signature motifs.
Having tackled subjects such as the British state terrorism in early '80s Northern Ireland (with the 1990 conspiracy thriller Hidden Agenda) and Irish republicanism during the Irish war of independence and Irish civil war (with The Wind That Shakes the Barley, the Palme d'Or winner at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival), Loach now turns to the historical figure of Jimmy Gralton, the only Irishman ever deported without trial from his own country as an illegal alien.
By turns indignant and melancholic, Jimmy's Hall reconstructs the controversies surrounding the rural "dance hall" — a community centre of sorts — that Gralton (Barry Ward) first opened on the eve of the Irish civil war.
Ken Loach tells story of Jimmy Gralton, communist Ireland kicked out
As politicians, landowners and the Catholic Church — mostly taking the shape of an uptight parish priest, Father Sheridan (Jim Norton) — close in to shut it down, the community stage defiant but futile protests.