Synchronicity on the spot.

Though Ken Loach's Palme d'Or winner doesn't open in Britain until next Friday (albeit in far fewer theaters than in France), it was yesterday, Bloomsday, that he was all over the British papers talking about it. Coincidence? Of course. But how resonant nonetheless. "The past illuminates the present," writes John Patterson in today's Guardian, "and just because Loach's movie is set nearly 90 years ago doesn't mean it has no application to our current nightmares. The Wind That Shakes the Barley is set, after all, in 1920-22, exactly when Britain was bombing the newly created state of Iraq into existence." And of course, it was in February 1922 (after it'd been serialized in The Little Review from 1918 to 1920) that the first copies of James Joyce's Ulysses saw the light of day - in Paris.

In yesterday's Guardian, Stuart Jeffries recounts the utterly absurd but entirely predictable insults, complete with all the exhausted-to-the-point-of-meaninglessness Nazi references, flung at Loach in the British press and then asks him to comment: "'I know from these attacks that we've really hit home. It is personally abusive, but I know where these people are coming from. It shows that if you attack their notion of the British empire as a charitable institution, then they foam at the mouth and bite the carpet.' And then the quiet man turns up the volume. 'These people who write this are the breeding ground for fascism.'"

Well. While that goes round, Jeffries offers: "What's most exasperating about the attacks on Loach is that they hinder more sensible reflection on Loach's work at the very moment when it is being internationally celebrated as never before." Meanwhile, the Telegraph's David Gritten also has a good long talk with Loach, noting towards the end, "Not long ago Telegraph readers voted him a Great Britons contender. They may dislike his views, but admire the sincere, unswerving way he articulates them."

Let's hope so. There's more on the film and Loach in the New Statesman (choose carefully; if, like me, you're not a subscriber, you can only read one article for free per day), while, in the London Times, an appearance by Loach at the Barbican on June 22 is promoted thusly: "Put Ken Loach on the spot."

"None of what we're living through is new," writes Patterson after suggesting films be made about the Algerian war, John Brown and Haditha. "There are a million relevant, exciting stories which resonate loudly down to our own times. If only people would start filming them."

By the way, Coudal Partners were having a fine Bloomsday yesterday and found a few terrific items: Djuna Barnes's 1922 interview with Joyce for Vanity Fair; DT Max in the New Yorker on Joyce's grandson, who's "effectively controlled the Joyce estate" since the mid-80s; and a 2004 piece in the Economist on Bloomsday hoopla. "A great book? Yes it is Yes."

Posted by dwhudson at June 17, 2006 10:52 AM