Last night’s film was ‘MY NAME IS JOE’, a Ken Loach film from 1998 I’ve been aware of since forever (well, 1998 at least), but have never seen.
It follows recovering alcoholic Joe (played by Peter Mullan) as he navigates his life in one of Glasgow’s poorest and roughest neighbourhoods, where unemployment is 50% and violence, drugs, and alcoholism are rife.
Joe himself is 38 years old and unemployed, but he does odd jobs for cash in hand, helps manage a local low-league football team, and tries to mentor a reformed drug addict called Liam, who is out of jail and trying to turn his life around, whilst Liam’s girlfriend, Sabine’s drug use carries on unabated and the social workers and health visitors are taking an interest in the welfare of their young son.
Joe’s orbit passes into that of Sarah, a social worker who is involved with Liam’s case, he takes on a job doing some wallpapering for her at her house, and the two strike up a friendship that blossoms into romance. (Sarah’s backstory is not much explored, but we learn that both her parents are dead, she has no romantic attachments and lives a fairly lonely life in her house. Some darkness is hinted it during one of her conversations with Joe but we don’t learn the details.)
As the film progresses we learn that Liam is in debt to local drug dealers for £2000 due to his girlfriend’s ongoing drug use, and her using the drugs that she was supposed to be selling whilst Liam was in jail. (£2000 is an astronomical amount of cash, and is spoken of in the kinds of terms often reserved for talking about billions, these are people to whom £20 is a lot of money.)
Joe protects Liam as best he can, but the ultimatum finally comes in the form of either paying up the £2000, Liam’s girlfriend is put to work as a prostitute, Liam’s legs are broken, or Joe can do a couple of jobs for the drug dealer, with whom he has a history.
I found this film utterly engrossing and deeply moving, the deprivation and poverty of Glasgow is juxtaposed beautifully with the fierce friendships and loyalties that people maintain with each other, in the face of crushing odds against them achieving even the most meagre of existences.
Watching Joe and Sarah’s romance blossom is wonderful, but as this is a Ken Loach film, things are, of course, going to start to go wrong.
This isn’t as nakedly political a film as the toweringly superb ‘I, Daniel Blake’, but its impact is not lessened any because of this, it is in many ways a fairly simple tale, fantastically well told, with an emotional resonance that grabs you right from the opening frames and doesn’t let go until the credits roll.
932/1000 - Available on Amazon Prime or, as I found out after watching it, the entire film is on YouTube, so no excuses for not watching it.
https://youtu.be/BEvEzO0KXhA <<< Link to the full film.
NOTE - It is a VERY SCOTTISH film, I could follow it OK but you’ll need to concentrate on what’s being said sometimes unless you’re Scottish.
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