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April 5, 2013 Beneath the Kilt, a Modern Scotland By GRAHAM FULLER In the new comedy <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcQIvmR21VU> The Angels Share four young unemployed Glaswegians dressed in kilts set out on a journey into the Scottish Highlands. The soundtrack even features the infectious anthem Im Gonna Be (500 Miles) by their countrymen the Proclaimers. But these miscreants could not belong less to the mountains and glens north of the Highland line. No, this is a <http://movies.nytimes.com/person/99998/Ken-Loach?inline=nyt-per> Ken Loach film, and though its sympathetic to the plight of the unemployed, one of the directors long-running concerns, The Angels Share is also a fish-out-of-water satire about Scots in Scotland. And that, as it turns out, has also been one of Mr. Loachs longtime themes, albeit one seldom noted during his five decades of making movies. In the film Robbie (Paul Brannigan) has renounced violence and is desperate for work. Sentenced to community service for a transgression, he befriends the fellow scofflaws Albert, Mo and Rhino. When their community-service supervisor, Harry (John Henshaw), gives his crew members a break by taking them on a tour of a distillery and subsequently to a tasting in Edinburgh, Robbie discovers he has a connoisseurs nose for whisky. He and his friends hatch a harebrained plan to steal a cask of Malt Mill (named for an Islay distillery that closed in 1962) thats expected to sell for £1 million at an auction. To allay suspicion on their Highland trek the four disguise themselves in kilts as whisky train-spotters. It takes a French tourist to tell Rhino he is wearing his backward. Alberts sporran (the pouch that hangs over a kilt-wearers groin) bruises his private parts. A close-up suggests Robbie is awed by a vista of a loch. The gormless Albert is confused by his first sight of Edinburgh Castle. The point was to show that the Sir Walter Scott image of kilts and sporrans bears no reality to the lives of ordinary Scottish people, Mr. Loach said in a telephone interview from London. The Highlands are a force of nature not to be parodied, but the use of Highland scenes and tartan on shortbread tins and of Edinburgh Castle on millions of postcards is largely an invention of the tourist industry. The Angels Share, an IFC film opening in Manhattan on Friday, is the 10th full-length film that the English Mr. Loach has made with the Scottish screenwriter Paul Laverty, and the fifth they have made in Mr. Lavertys homeland. Theres a quaint view of Scotland all kilts, bagpipes, whisky, misty mountains and clear streams, Mr. Laverty said recently. The kids in the film take advantage of all that through their wit and streetwiseness. In preparation Mr. Laverty talked with community-service workers and learned that all of them drank cheap supermarket alcohol, but few had tasted Scotlands national drink, which is promoted internationally by a £4 billion industry. And few had visited the romantic parts of the Highlands and islands, where whisky is distilled. Jonathan Murray, who teaches film at Edinburgh College of Art, noted that The Angels Share is not the first Loach and Laverty film to place modern city dwellers on the rural terrain of Scotlands semi-mythical past. The idea that there is a heritage version of Scotland that exists for the delectation of tourists, not locals, is a consistent refrain within their Scottish-set work, Mr. Murray said in an e-mail. In their 1996 film, <http://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/26/movies/jobless-scot-in-nicaragua-discover s-political-insight.html> Carlas Song, a bus driver literally gets mired when he transplants his double-decker from the mean streets of Glasgow to the country lanes of Loch Lomond. David Archibald, who teaches film at Glasgow University, is studying The Angels Share. Kilts and tartan are the objects that have been picked up and spat back, in some ways, at Scottish culture, he said. Loach and Laverty subvert them but also show the disconnect that exists between them and people at the bottom of Scottish society. He cited a scene in <http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/162496/My-Name-Is-Joe-Movie-/overview> My Name Is Joe (1998) that shows how these two filmmakers juxtaposed images of stereotypical Scottishness with impoverished Scots to call into question precisely the touristic image which is broadcast abroad. The title character, a recovering alcoholic returning to Glasgow from a drug deal, stops to buy tea from a van parked in Glencoe, famous for its gloomy beauty and the 1692 clan MacDonald massacre by a British regiment. Irked by a bagpiper playing to Japanese tourists there, Joe and the tea vendor wryly remark on the pipers knowing only three songs, all heritage anthems. Ill lay odds he sells shortbread, Joe deadpans. In The Angels Share Mr. Loach reveals a documentarians reverence for the artisanal craft of whisky distilling (angels share is a distillers term for the 2 percent of whisky that vaporizes annually as it matures), but he draws a line at the motives of top-end buyers. The production is based on the subtlety, fine judgment and toil of working people, he said. Yet nobodys taste buds are that refined that they can justify spending a million pounds on a few mouthfuls of a drink. Its not related to the taste or the quality; its related to the status of owning it. Now in the 51st year of his career Mr. Loach, Britains most resolute left-wing filmmaker, would not concede that Robbie and his friends Robin Hood-like acquisition of some whisky amounts to a socialist redistribution of wealth. Its just a little tale, he said, allowing that their larceny exposes the hypocrisy of the man whos spending the money. His new documentary, <http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/470800/Camille-Claudel-1915-Movie-/overview > The Spirit of 45, which opened in Britain in March, can be connected thematically to The Angels Share. It celebrates the 1945-51 Labour governments creation of the welfare state and its nationalization policy, which created thousands of jobs. It also traces how Margaret Thatchers Conservative government dismantled public ownership through privatization, leading to the highest unemployment since the 1930s. In Mr. Loachs view, had Scottish mines, shipyards and factories not suffered widespread closures during the Thatcher years, the generation represented by Robbie might have prospered. They are the second generation of unemployed victims from the 1980s, Mr. Loach said. Industries successful in one period will inevitably not succeed in another, but the problem was that there was no plan to bring work in. It was just left to the marketplace, which failed, leading to mass unemployment. Now capitalism invades every part of life, he added, regretfully.
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