The Navigators (2001)

In terms of story and tone, The Navigators, Ken Loach's somewhat overlooked 2001 film, is the kid brother to his earlier film Riff-Raff. Both films are relatively light in tone and deal with the corrosive effects on an industry when management insist you start to cut corners, and both films were written by men who had worked in those industries, making for a deeply authentic and believable atmosphere.

The Navigators was written by first-time screenwriter and former railwayman Rob Dawber, who based it on his own experiences and what he saw as a result of the privatisation of the railways in the mid 90s. Tragically, this film also shares another link with Riff-Raff; like the writer of that earlier film, former labourer Bill Jesse, Dawber died not long after the work on the film was completed, cruelly cutting short a promising secondary career in film. His death from mesothelioma, a rare form of lung cancer, is all the more poignant when you consider it was likely caused by handling asbestos in his work on the railways. As Ken Loach said in Dawber's Guardian obituary, 'working people have lost a champion'. He received a posthumous BAFTA for Best New Writer for the film.

The Navigators follows five railway workers –  pragmatic John, young divorcee Paul, cautious Mick, sensitive Jim and union man Gerry  – who work in a Sheffield depot affected by the privatisation of British Rail in 1995. The men are informed by their useless and pompous supervisor Harpic (so called because he's 'clean round the bend') one morning that they are now working for a company called East Midlands Infrastructure (and pretty soon after, that company is bought out by another; Gilchrist Engineering, which refuses to recognise all previous agreements made between management and the union) and that from now on they will either be competing with rival track companies or they can take voluntary redundancy. Pretty soon, the gang realise that's not all they're competing against either; as work dries up and agencies dominate the market offering well paid contracts but no job security or adequate health and safety precautions, their backs are against the wall and they're left to contemplate whether the grass is really greener on the other side of the track.

The Navigators is a very funny film filled with an authentic working man's bone dry, witty dialogue that could only ever have been written by a genuine working man. There's a very funny joke that is played across several scenes revolving around the greediness and slow-wittedness of a secondary character, the depot's cleaner, that never fails to have me chuckling, but this lightness of tone effectively hides the darker, more serious undercurrent, making its bite all the more sharper when it strikes. The scene featuring Gilchrist Engineering's slick corporate video, full of empty yet impressive sounding buzzwords is satirically and dolefully amusing at first, but, with hindsight and the poor effects of privatisation apparent to all, we can see just how hollow and insulting such a facile veneer truly is. Worse of all, the film showcases just how damage these private contractors did to the community of the rail workforce, ushering in their dog eat dog methodology that effectively set the industry back a century in terms of workers rights and protection as is shockingly witnessed in the film's final reel.

It's bewildering to think that a gem such as this is all too often overlooked in Loach's cannon. It needs to be seen by more people and will almost certainly be appreciated. It's central message is all the more topical in this world of zero hour contracts and a substandard living wage and, in its central theme of nationalisation being better than privatisation, it should undoubtedly strike a chord with anyone who felt politically energised by Jeremy Corbyn's recent Labour manifesto which pledged the renationalisation of the railways. 

Riff-Raff (1991)

Film 4 have this week been having a mini Ken Loach season to celebrate the premiere of his documentary Spirit of '45. Now I've seen quite a lot of Loach's work, but on sitting down to Riff-Raff, I have to admit that I was not actually sure if I'd seen it. If I have I presume it must have been around the time it was released/when I was very young, as it's the kind of film my dad would have probably watched. So, with this uncertainty in mind, I'm going to have to class it as a first watch. I'm very grateful to Film 4 for 'introducing' me to it.

Riff-Raff is essentially Loach's attempt at updating/making Robert Tressell's The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, a landmark and polemic piece of classic literature depicting the building trade of the early 1900s. It is Loach exploration of the same manual work and working class conditions in the death throes of Thatcherism that proves that the novel's resonance and reaction to the unjust society of it's day hadn't gone away some 70+years later and, sadly, it still remain with us now.

Loach's ability to nurture some genuinely realistic and understated performances is just as striking here as it is in any of his films. The breakout ones are of course Robert Carlyle, then largely unknown, and Emer McCourt  as the two leads. Ricky Tomlinson (a former builder himself who was sent to prison for strike action for better working conditions in the 1970s) shines in a strong supporting role as the Scouse politically aware builder. 

Tomlinson has since become an actor I baulk at whenever he appears in film and TV as he's become something of a stereotype and insulting cliche. Tomlinson of the last 15 years is a short hand for the worst kind of excesses of sentimental Liverpudlian and/or working class male that probably doesn't really exist beyond the media's depiction, but he's absolutely genuine here perhaps because he's largely playing a version of himself.  Not for one moment do I cringe at his appearance in this film, as I'd normally do, because I actually know the kind of rough, honest, gentlemanly keen for fair play scousers (or working class blokes in general) that he represents here. Not even the big comic scene he gets here -  that one could argue created the mould for him, pictured above -  detracts from this, in fact it serves to enhance it. This is no heightened imitation and as such it's rewarding to see. It's also interesting to spot an incredibly young looking Peter Mullan.

Ultimately like much of Loach's work the film treads a familiar path, indeed for anyone who has seen his later film The Navigators (which looked at the conditions of railways workers during the last days of nationalisation and subsequent privatisation) this may feel rather like Déjà vu, especially as both feature an avoidable, unfair tragedy as a key dramatic plot point towards their respective climaxes. But the message is still a clear and sympathetic one, and a thought provoking and entertaining 90 minutes will be had. Certainly it puts one in mind of just how healthy British independent film was in the early 90s with Loach and Mike Leigh at the helm and with Carlyle serving as a kind of buffer here with Danny Boyle just around the corner.

Just one thing, as much as I admire Stewart Copeland (as previous Theme Time blog posts will testify) I'm not sure his score works here. I keep expecting Edward Woodward's Equalizer to wander onto the building site!