Land and Freedom

 ((British-Spanish-German))

By JOHN HOPEWELL

An Alta Films release (in Spain) of a Parallax Pictures (London)/Messidor Films (Madrid)/Road Movies Dritte Produktionen (Berlin) production, with participation of Television Espanola and British Screen. (Intl. sales: the Sales Co., London/TVE, Madrid.) Produced by Rebecca O'Brien. Executive producers, Sally Hibbin, Gerardo Herrera, Marta Esteban, Ulrich Felsberg. Directed by Ken Loach. Screenplay, Jim Allen.
 
Dave Carr ... Ian Hart
Blanca ... Rosana Pastor
Maite ... Iciar Bollain
Lawrence ... Tom Gilroy
Vidal ... Marc Martinez
Bernard ... Frederic Pierrot
Kim ... Suzanne Maddock
 

(English, Castilian Spanish and Catalan dialogue)

Brit helmer Ken Loach's most ambitious film to date, "Land and Freedom" follows a Liverpudlian to the Republican trenches and political treachery of the Spanish Civil War. Despite a slight windiness in its political discussions, pic's superb performances, gentle humor, warmth, action sequences and beautifully teased-out love story should make this one of the must-see art movies of the year. It looks to generate mucho discussion upon competing at Cannes next month.

Film world-preemed in Spain April 7, drawing glowing reviews from local crix and packing its mainly arthouse play sites on limited release. The reported demand from mainstream theaters for prints when pic went wider April 21 suggests some breakout potential, at least in Spain.

Script by Jim Allen, who most recently penned "Raining Stones" for Loach, covers much the same historical terrain as George Orwell's celebrated account of the conflict, "Homage to Catalonia." One crucial difference is that the protagonist here is a salt-of-the-earth Liverpudlian who lacks Orwell's political articulateness, even though he comes to share his indignation.

By May 1937, instead of fighting Franco, the Republicans were divided in Barcelona into bitter, rival groups -- the militia and anarchists on one side, the Communists on the other.

A prologue, set in Liverpool in 1994, has a pensioner, Dave Carr, suffering a heart attack in his council flat and dying on the way to the hospital. His granddaughter discovers an old suitcase full of photos, newspaper cuttings about the Spanish Civil War, letters from Dave at the front and a faded red kerchief containing (inexplicably) a few handfuls of soil.

Cut to a worker's meeting in Liverpool in 1936, where young Communist Dave (Ian Hart) decides to go to Spain to fight fascism. It certainly beats drawing a pittance every week on the dole.

Soon, Dave is on a train rattling toward Barcelona. He falls in with a French kid and is sent to fight with the militia on the Republican front in Aragon.

While training some volunteers, Dave's 1896 Mauser blows up in his face. Hospitalized in Barcelona, he enters a delicately portrayed relationship with Blanca (Rosana Pastor), a militia woman from his unit.

Pic's didactic thrust emerges most fully in the Barcelona segment. Loach and Allen's thesis is that the attempts by Spain's working class to effect a revolution were systematically destroyed by a Stalinist-controlled Republican government, abetted by the Spanish Communist Party, because of Stalin's desire to appease the capitalist West.

In a sequence of black farce, Dave finds himself defending the Communist Party HQ against his supposed allies. Shooting at him from across the street is a bloke from Manchester, England; neither of them knows what the other is doing there.

Dave, in a burst of righteous indignation, tears up his Communist Party card and returns to his militia unit (and to Blanca) on the Aragonese front.

Hart and Pastor give outstanding, understated perfs in the central roles of Dave and Blanca, and other thesps are solid. Barry Ackroyd's lensing is memorable, in both its more docu-like moments and its striking shots of the olive groves and blue-hazed hills of Aragon.

Though never arid, the film's political gabfests may prove overlong for some. Along with the relatively small scale of the action sequences, they could limit the movie's potential to cross over to wider audiences.

Still, Loach manages to skillfully sustain the movie's pace, mixing meticulous historical detail, action, debate and romance. Just when the militia are starting to seem irredeemably perfect, the script has them summarily execute a priest in revenge for his role in the death of five of their number.

Loach's real triumph, however, is to get the viewer rooting for characters in a conflict that, for most, is as remote as the Trojan War. Whether or not one shares the ideals of the two protagonists, they emerge as sympathetic characters , with their fate likely to produce a lump in the throat of most viewers.

Camera (color), Barry Ackroyd; editor, Jonathan Morris; music, George Fenton; art direction, Llorenc Miquel; costume design, Ana Alvargonzalez; sound (Dolby), Ray Beckett; special effects, Reyes Abades; assistant directors, Javier Chinchilla, Neil Grigson, Julian Hearne; casting, Marta Valsecchi, Richard Rousseau, Endy Ettinger, Susie Figgis. Reviewed at Renoir Theater, Madrid, April 16, 1995. (In Cannes Film Festival -- competing.) Running time: 106 min.