Land And Freedom

Ken Loach, UK/Spain/Germany 1995, 109 minutes

Ken Loach collaborates once again with Jim Allen, his partner for Days of Hope and Hidden Agenda, on this moving story about the struggle between a group of young political idealists fighting against the Franco regime during the Spanish Civil War. The film received international acclaim not only for the outside perception of the British writer and diretor but also for an undocumented part of Spanish history that dealt with the ordinary men and women that took up the struggle.

In present-day Liverpool a teenager reads the journals of her dead grandad, and is thrust into the past recalling his involvement in the Spanish Civil War.

Disillusioned by the lack of willingness shown by Eupopean governments towards the upris- ing of Franco's Fascists, a young working-class idealist David (convincingly played by Ian Hart) decides to leave England for Spain to join POUM (a Marxist separatist group made up of League of Nation freedom fighters). Given very little military training he is thrown into the deep end of tête-à-tête offensives with the Fascists in and around rural countryside. Soon David realises that the enthusiasm which brought him to Spain is paling away. The naïvety he shows is quickly exposed, he is incapable of the harsh decisions and extreme measures that have to be administered in war. One of these extreme measures shows a village priest dragged away and executed for collaborating with the Fascists. The POUM believe that if freedom is to be achieved (a quite remarkable scene by Loach allows the camera to wander from villager to freedom fighter each expressing their reasons for the plight in which their beliefs lie) then it's most effective weapon has to be that the Land liberated from the fascists, is in the people's hands to govern. This is the essence of the collective struggle. Yet the POUM leader is shot and killed because Hart refuses to bomb a group of Fascists who have taken up refuge with civilians and this causes a rift within the movement. Hart, ashamed for not preventing the death, leaves even though he has become close with the deceased man's Spanish girlfriend, he wanders the countryside, dazed and confused by the changes of events.

After a stint fighting for another anti-Franco group (a sardonic scene appears where two groups, who ironically are fighting the same battle, shell each other from the roof tops) Hart returns to the POUM who have refused to capitulate to either the Fascists or the Communists. This in turn leads Hart to look deeper into his own convictions which consequently could lose him all which he has formally stood for.

With Land and Freedom Ken Loach has given us a personal journey, as this project first took shape in the early seventies it may yet prove to be his most audacious. The arid Spanish landscape is brutally depicted and its war scenes are never romantically dewelled upon, leaving the viewer more room to get underneath the characters, characters that come from all points of the world to fight for freedom.

Review by Marcus Whitfield
Taken from EUFS Programme 1997-98

Showing in a special preview in co-operation with the Cameo cinema in Tollcross, Ken Loach's epic Land and Freedom represents a significant shift in interest for the director of such socio-realist, anti-government polemics as Kes, Riff Raff, Poor Cow and more recently Ladybird, Ladybird which features later in the season.

The discovery of a batch of love letters among her grandfather's possessions gives a woman an unexpected insight into the old man's past and provides Loach with a means to flash-back to the events of the Spanish Civil War when passionate communist Dave Carr (Ian Hart) maintained an intense and tender relationship with militia woman Blanca (Rosana Pastor).

Although we are not trudging through the urban grime of inner city Britain to illustrate the evils and injustices of right wing (particularly Thatcherite) politics, Loach maintains his preoccupation with socialist ideals as Carr experiences the communalism of the left-wing democratic group he joins, alongside whom he fights and with whom he discusses his dreams and principles.

Hart gives an outstanding performance (here looking nothing like John Lennon) which marks him out as an actor of great promise, and Loach creates a film with tremendous emotional impact.

Review by Iain Harral/Stephen Cox
Taken from EUFS Programme 1995-96