CAN LEAVES STILL SPROUT FROM AN OLD OAK? ON REFUGE AND RESISTANCE THROUGH THE LENS OF KEN LOACH’S FILM “THE OLD OAK"

Abstract

The analysis of Ken Loach's film The Old Oak (2023) is the proposal to debate, within the microcosm of an English village, some echoes of the relationship between the East and the West. The goal is to focus on the dynamics of hostility and hospitality announced by the encounter between the residents of the failing English mining village and the newly arrived Syrian refugees. The text explores how stereotypes and difficulties in achieving mutual identification manifest not only in the village itself but also in the space of the pub, named "The Old Oak," which refers to the tree it is named after — an intermediary represented in both English folklore and Arab and Persian cultures. The experience of uncanniness (das Unheimliche, in Freud), linked to the threat of the "other" and the loss of places of belonging, is a feeling also common to both groups, even if expressed through hatred toward the foreigner by the local inhabitants and the uprooting of the refugees. Also highlighted are the art of photography and the pub's reopened room, which is re-signified as a space for coexistence and resistance. This work articulates psychoanalytic concepts with an observance of the social and cultural, demonstrating, through the director's optimistic lens, the possibility of alliances and the construction of new social bonds despite the initial tensions.