Ken Loach has given up

This is essentially an incoherent rant but I wanted to get it out.

Having written my dissertation on how Ken Loach's films are flawed in that they cannot encourage an audience to act on what they have seen in his films but only passively watch, I was really disheartened to hear him say this himself at Cannes in reference to his new film 'Route Irish'.

His words were it is "only a film", for a man who has effectively made the same film again and again since 'Kes' it does make me think what is the point in him making any more films? He has a standardised crew he works with (although for 'Route Irish' he did exchange Barry Ackroyd for his old Cinematographer Chris Menges), standardised look to his films and standardised political content.

The possible exception to this could perhaps be 'Looking for Eric' the key difference here being that inside of showing the bad side of capitalism or more specifically Thatcherism (as in 'My Name is Joe', 'Riff-Raff', 'The Navigators', 'Bread and Roses', 'Sweet Sixteen'.....) it showed the good side of Socialism, when everyone gets together and smashes up the gansters house. Personally one of my favourite lines from anyone ever was from Ken Loach in a Radio 4 interview for the film programme, in which when asked if he felt like this scene encouraged vandalism of property he replied "property is theft", that's what I want to hear!

Although 'Looking For Eric' may demonstrate a difference of approach or perhaps some form of progression (although really it looks like an attempt to make his films profitable, which sadly failed), it doesn't represent any sort of progression cinematically or audibly (probably the wrong word).

This is likely due to the fact that his Cinematic style is drawn from his political beliefs (can't fault that). But I do think that this is style is fundamentally misconcieved. I may not be politically erudite enough to argue my point but shall try (my point may well be fundamentally misconcieved).  Ken Loach has said in many an interview that (I'm paraphrasing a little) if you film someone in the hollywood sense of shining a light on someones face and putting the camera two feet in front of them it objectifies this person, thus alienating the audience from this person and allowing you to in short do bad things to these people.  If you were to film the person/people from a distance on a telephoto lens (which is essentially standing back and zooming in) and light them naturally, this would encourage an audience to empathise which the person being filmed, so that you laugh when they laugh, cry when they cry etc.

I don't understand why this is? I can understand why this would be for lighting in the case of Ken Loach's films because they are all set in the real world and natural lighting would enforce this fact.  But I don't understand the lens choice. I can understand that it is easier for the actors as they are able to interact without the intrusion of a camera, (one of the technicians at our university who had worked in the cutting rooms on 'Kes' had told me that Ken Loach shot from so far back that the editor could never see the clapper board) but why does this effect our empathy?

I think that this style should be revisited, when he is working with such great Cinematographers as Chris Menges and Barry Ackroyd who have done such great and quite varied work it seems uncharacteristically conservative to have such a rigid approach to shooting.

When I say audibly I mean the music, ditch the crappy 90's sounding bass lines.  If there is one thing which dates these films more than the cinematic style it is this.

I will re-edit this entry soon and form a coherent argument out of it but for the time being I just wanted to get it written down.