LONDON — It's hard to believe that this slight, middle-aged man with a kindly smile, talking in a voice just above whisper level, could be the scourge of the British Establishment.
Yet filmmaker Ken Loach has occupied that role for the best part of 25 years, with a series of films (some for TV) strongly critical of social conditions in Britain, and all made from a radical viewpoint.
Loach, now 54, has been relatively quiet during the 1980s--Margaret Thatcher's era--but this year, he has returned to prominence in spectacular fashion.
His latest movie, "Hidden Agenda," deals with the shooting of an American civil rights activist visiting strife-torn Belfast as part of a commission hearing allegations of ill-treatment by British security forces. The civil rights lawyer (Brad Dourif) is being driven to meet a mysterious man who has damaging evidence about British activities in Ireland; he and his driver are killed.
A senior British policeman (Brian Cox) flies in to investigate the murders, but his efforts are frustrated by the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the police force in Northern Ireland. The murders turn out to have been ordered by security forces, but RUC top brass insist that the incident was a justified shooting of suspected terrorists. Meanwhile the mystery man, an ex-British intelligence officer, contacts the lawyer's fiancee (Frances McDormand), whom he wants to break his story.
The theme of "Hidden Agenda" is hugely controversial in Britain, whose army maintains an armed presence in Northern Ireland in an attempt to protect its status as part of the United Kingdom, and to limit the terrorist activities of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), which seeks a united Ireland.
But "Hidden Agenda" was chosen as Britain's entry at this year's Cannes Film Festival, where it eventually won the special jury prize. Around this time, all hell broke loose.
First, lawmaker Ivor Stanbrook, a member of Thatcher's Conservative Party, was moved to describe the film as "not a British entry, but an IRA entry." That made big headlines in Britain. "Of course," says Ken Loach mildly, "he'd never actually seen the film."
In Cannes, a press conference for "Hidden Agenda" ended in uproar. Alexander Walker, film critic of the London Evening Standard, stood up and launched a blistering attack on the film, casting doubt on the truth of the events depicted.
