Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

The Old Oak

Ken Loach's palatable late style
British Film Festival
by
ABR Arts 06 November 2023

The Old Oak

Ken Loach's palatable late style
British Film Festival
by
ABR Arts 06 November 2023
Dave Turner as T.J. Ballantyne and Ebla Mari as Yara (courtesy of Palace Films).
Dave Turner as T.J. Ballantyne and Ebla Mari as Yara (courtesy of Palace Films).

According to the Palestinian-American literary critic Edward Said, when some artists, musicians, and writers enter the last period of their lives, the sense of their own ending (whether from old age or ill health) occasions a change in their craft, a kind of ‘new idiom’ that he calls ‘late style’. While we might intuitively tend to think of old age bringing a sense of ‘reconciliation and serenity’, of ‘harmony and resolution’ to an artist’s portfolio, Said is more interested in those artists for whom the end actually marks a turning point, a shift towards ‘intransigence, difficulty and contradiction’. In this regard, Said writes of Ibsen and of Beethoven (as had Theodor Adorno before him) that their final works are characterised by a maturity that does not simply round out the career, but adds complexity to it, and seems out of step with the world in which it exists.

You May Also Like

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.