My Name Is Joe

Ken Loach | UK | 1998 | 105 mins

Ken Loach has never been very fashionable. The cinematic equivalent of E P Thompson, his determination to give a cinematic space for people and subjects that the rest of Britain's industry ignores has long been criticised from both right and left. To the Daily Mail types he can be simply dismissed as a left wing propagandist, a man who refuses to accept the ‘reality' of capitalist triumph and socialist failure. More seriously, academic Marxists accuse Loach of being unable to mount an effective social critique since his use of mainstream film making practices negates anything revolutionary in his content.

My Name is Joe is unlikely to change anyone's opinion. Scripted by Paul Laverty (who previously collaborated with Loach on Carla's Song) and set in Glasgow, it's the story of Joe (Peter Mullan). Joe's a recovering alcoholic - the film takes its title from the first part of his Alcoholics Anonymous mantra "My name is Joe and I'm an alcoholic" - who ekes out a living as an odd-job man and manages "the worst football team in Glasgow".

While picking up one of his players, Liam, Joe bumps into health visitor Sarah (Louise Goodall) who is checking on Liam's baby. Initially Joe regards Sarah with contempt,as just another middle class authority figure, but a tentative romance starts to develop when both find some common interest in helping Liam, who is in trouble with loan shark and drug dealer McGowan. Although the film is often heavy going it also displays moments of tenderness and humour that might surprise - such as when Joe's football team, who have long worn a motley assortment of strips, steal a set of Brasil kits.

Amid uniformly excellent performances, the chief weaknesses of My Name is Joe are those common to all Loach's social realist output: The line between being realistic about the plight of the underclass and of making films that are so depressing and despairing that no-one, except a few masochists, will bother seeing them is an incredibly fine one. That Loach should sometimes fall off this tightrope is, then, unsurprising; that he should walk it so successfully most of the time is a miracle.

Review by Keith H Brown
Taken from EUFS programme spring 2000