Now available in DVD from Koch-Lorber, Ken Loach’s “Raining Stones” is a
reminder of how powerful he can be when he focuses on the lives of
ordinary working people trapped in poverty. Nobody can gainsay the
importance of films such “The Wind that Shakes the Barley”, “Land and
Freedom,” and “Carla’s Song” that deal with civil war in Ireland, Spain
and Nicaragua respectively. But when he turns his attention to people
struggling to stay above water by in contemporary Great Britain, there
is more opportunity for humor and depth of characterization.
In “Raining Stones,” Loach could have hardly selected a more mundane
subject, namely the stubborn and ultimately foolish determination of a
chronically unemployed Irish Catholic father to scrape up the money for
his daughter’s communion dress. When the film begins, Bob (Bruce Jones)
and his good friend Tommy (Ricky Tomlinson), also unemployed and Irish
Catholic, are somewhere in the northern English countryside trying
mostly unsuccessfully to rustle a lamb. When they finally bag one and
bring it to the local butcher, they discover that it is mutton from an
older sheep–an unmarketable meat for the most part. The butcher buys
part of it and they try to peddle the rest at a local pub. When they
take a break and order a couple of pints, they notice a poster on the
wall asking for contributions to help out an injured man. The dialog
between Bob, Tommy and the barmaid captures both the plight of the
people depicted in the film as well as their attempts to cope with their
situation through humor.
Bob: (pointing to the man in the poster) How’s that Joe Young going on?
Barmaid: Aye, you know he fell off the bloody roof.
Tommy: I know. And he wasn’t even employed bloody legally, was he.
Bob: That means he won’t get a penny back.
Barmaid: Joking aside, we’re having a bit of a collection. See if
we can send him to Lourdes.
Tommy: Did you hear about the kid from Liverpool in the bloody
wheelchair they took to Lourdes? They got him to the water’s edge and he
couldn’t get in ’cause his legs was twisted, so they had to hire a
little crane and pick him and the wheelchair up over the water and
submerge him. And when he came out, they all had a look at his legs, and
his legs was still twisted, but the wheelchair had new tires on it.
full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2007/08/12/raining-stones/
