It's a beautiful film about a beautiful people. Oh, yes, it also has violence of a kind different from those in late-summer thrillers.
Jimmy’s Hall
Grade: A-
Director: Ken Loach (The Wind That Shakes the Barley)
Screenplay: Paul Laverty (Sweet Sixteen) from the Donal O’Kelly play
Cast: Barry Ward (The Claim), Francis Magee (Layer Cake)
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 109 min.
by John DeSando
“We need to take control of our lives again. Work for need, not for greed. And not just to survive like a dog, but to live. And to celebrate. And to dance, to sing, as free human beings.” James Gralton (Barry Ward)
Jimmy’s Hall depicts an Irish dance hall, Pearse-Connolly Hall, made by the people as a Depression-era testimony to their will to be free human beings. Such a spirit, embodied in true-life by James Gralton, who built the structure and suffered for it, is in almost every beautiful frame of a romantic-realist film that cries out for the common man.
Oh, yes, it’s class struggles again, as if we don’t have it still in America. In Jimmy’s Hall, the people have dirt on their hands and worn clothes on their backs, but they have an indomitable spirit that exists always despite major oppression from the likes of England and the Catholic Church. The dance segments and theme may evoke Kevin Bacon in Footloose, but this film goes beyond dance into metaphysical rebellion.
Only too real is the divide between the haves and the have not’s, which today manifests itself in the form of the 1 percent super rich and self-centered legislators. Donald Trump would be an appropriate reference for the rich and some Southern senators for the legislators. In any case, those of us on the low side of the 99% can identify.
In this film, the rebellion is aimed squarely on the Catholic Church, embodied in the local pastor antagonist, Father Sheridan (Jim Norton), who mistakenly labels Gralton and his followers “communists,” although they want only freedom and dance for everyone. It’s the empowerment of the working class that endangers the absolute rule of the Catholic hierarchy, in cahoots with local powerbrokers, one of whom flogs his teen daughter for participating in the hall. Norton as the powerful prelate steals the picture, except that Ward as Gralton could become the coolest romantic hero in modern cinema.
Jimmy’s Hall is a different kind of rebellion epic because Jimmy is not murdered, and considerable violence is reserved for the hall itself. Deportation is a sort of punishment particularly painful for a people so closely defined by their land.
So the emphasis then is on the oppression of the mind (the Depression has the corner on violence to the welfare of the common man everywhere). For the Irish, a people deeply imbued in culture and specifically music and poetry, the film draws us to their charisma and grit, a beautiful evocation of spirit.The love between Jimmy and erstwhile sweetheart Oonagh (Simone Kirby) is as good as you’ll get in any film, especially where dance plays such an erotic and symbolic part. Spoiler: They never kiss!
Don’t miss this beguiling and involving historical romance:
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.rr.com
