I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Absolutely Brilliant!

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Of course Loach is a master of directing already. And he is getting better looking, prettier movies every time. But I wonder if he is getting softer on political issues? We see a really serious political conflict is watered down to something like Footloose. So they open a dancing hall and the church opposes it, than the owner gets deported... twice. For only wanting to dance!Well Jimmy here IS a political figure and actually he IS a communist in all his ideas except he didn't enlist in the communist party. Why else would they want him to gather the people when they want to take back the house of a poor family when it is taken by the landlord? Would that be because he own a dance hall? People don't only dance, sing and paint in that hall. They read and discuss and politically organize there. When the church says "education" is in it's hands, it is not like they don't know it so innocently. They know that the church have a monopoly over education and culture... and they know the church is in bed with the rich folks and the British. And they are well aware they are defying it. The hall is the cultural extension of the civil war. And all the people attending it are political activists well aware of their actions. Not just fighting for their right to party. Here goes the disgusting liberal thought that political activist and revolutionaries cannot have fun... basically; political is not fun. As if you have to choose one or another.I don't really think all movies always have to have so deep meaning and a political stand. I also watch Ironman to pass time. But that IS what I expect of Ken Loach. When it says Ken Loach on the title, I actually expect something to shake me to my core. I am truly disappointed in him for watering down his ideals to get more mass appeal. (or whatever reason, but this reminds me of the Chumbawamba song: Love me, I'm a liberal!)Spoiler: "we will keep on dancing Jimmy!" "Yeah, I'll send you money to throw a party..." Well it IS retiring time for Mister Loach.

There are many movies made about oppression, but not nearly enough. In this story based on facts and one man's intention to give culture, song and dance to his small, impoverished community, it defies belief that this travesty of injustice occurred.As usual, the Catholic Church, the overlords and the unjust legal system come together to destroy any chance a small community has of the vital birth-right of culture and harmony for those who need it most; an isolated county in Ireland.As one man steps up, after having been deported once already for the grand crime of opening a hall where people can learn such basic things as song, dance, art, literature and boxing, after his ten first ten year deportation, the local youth who have nothing to look forward to in life, convince him to do so again.This is a straightforward movie about a circumstance that defies belief, and yet it occurred. Worth the watch for anyone who understands that oppression and fascism is wrong and that normal people deserve joy, community and to fight back when their world makes no sense on account of simply wanting to life a life.

Ken Loach probably intended this film to be an ode to freedom. The freedom to do whatever you like, without an oppressive authority laying out the rules. In this particular case, the oppressive authority is the catholic church in Ireland, and the people fighting for freedom are the ordinary farmers and citizens, building their own community hall where they can dance, sing, play music and organize other events. The intention is good, but Loach delivers his message in a clumsy way. 'Jimmy's Hall' is a film without sharp edges, a one-dimensional tale of good and bad. The good guy is Jimmy, who returns to the Irish countryside after ten years in New York. The locals ask him to rebuild the old community hall, but when it is finished he has to confront the bad guy: the local priest, who considers the hall to be a threat to the power base of the catholic church. The supporters of the hall do everything they can, but in the end they can't win from such a powerful and oppressive institute. The raw realism from some of Loach's earlier films is completely missing here. The characters are hardly realistic - Jimmy is the hero and the priest is a villain. The script is completely one- dimensional. Jimmy is so holier-than-thou that he doesn't even try to win back the love of his one-time sweetheart Oonagh, because now she is married with children. In one scene, the two dance together in the dark silent hall. Loach probably meant this as a heart-breaking scene, but failed.The acting and the dialogue are stiff and unnatural. At one point, Jimmy's supporters discuss if they should attend a meeting in support of a homeless family. Some are against, because they think this could lead to the closing down of the hall. They politely exchange arguments, in well-formulated sentences. No shouting, no emotions, no cursing. It's like watching a stage play. And not even a good one. Let me be clear: not everything is terrible. 'Jimmy's Hall' is beautifully filmed, and brings an unsavoury aspect of pre-war Ireland to attention. But it is definitely not one of Ken Loach's best movies.

Ken Loach is playing on our nostalgia and with his own not to regret or make us regret the past he is describing or the misery he is depicting but to make us feel relieved that all that has disappeared. Over and over again. Film after film.Back to Ireland in the 1930s with flashbacks to the 1920s in a countryside rural parish that is entirely dominated by the catholic church under the responsibility of an old priest who is a fundamentalist. The area is also controlled by one clan of a family of landowners who owns everything and pretends to control the life of everyone. The priest does not hesitate to call the names of those he considers are doing some evil deed directly in the pulpit: he exposes his own parishioners if he disagrees with some of their actions. The landowner has a whole gang of guards and wardens that can use violence to impose the control of their boss. And finally the nazi party is developing in Ireland and trying to impose their rules. In fact on this point Ken Loach is very nice: during the Second World War, the Republic of Ireland and the press there, including some intellectual or writers, decided to remain neutral in the conflict between Great Britain and Germany because of their hostility toward Great Britain: let Hitler give them a lesson, was the idea. This pro- German nazi ideology was quite common and was of course founding itself on a strict fundamentalist approach of the Catholic religion as the compulsory unique unifying element of the whole of Ireland.The film tells the story of a young man, James Gralton, when he comes back from the USA and New York in the 1930s after having been forced to expatriate himself in the 20s by the same people as those hostile to him when he comes back: the catholic church, the landowners, the politicians and all those who have a little bit of authority or power. His crime was in the 1920s to have constructed a community hall where people taught poetry, painting and drawing, music, dancing, etc, freely and where he had balls every week on Saturday nights. He cut a very narrow escape in the 1920s. When he comes back ten years later, the young people ask him to reopen the Hall, and he does. Then the conflict is clear because James Gralton has connection with the Irish Communists and so he is considered as persona non grata from the very start. They are just looking for the good excuse to get rid of him. The occasion comes when one night in the dark some fascistic Ku Klux Klan imitators burn the hall to the ground. James Gralton becomes a menace to public order and he is banished from Ireland for life and sent back to New York on the simple excuse that he has an American passport and hence is a foreigner. In other words he is denied his native Irish nationality.When we watch that film and try to think about the period it depicts, the poverty and the exploitation it paints and the suffering it represents for simple, poor, ordinary working people, we feel the nostalgia about this period where courage existed and where the communist ideology was bringing some hope to the poorest among "us." But the nostalgia is not meaning "That was a good time and it is a shame we have lost it!" The nostalgia is progressive: "Thanks God we have gone beyond that and left it behind: today we can enjoy our life without the constant control of the catholic church, without the dictatorship of landowners and politicians. We are relieved and reassured: that good old time is gone and gone for good and the incestuous, mostly pedophile relation with the catholic church is finished, terminated." You can get the message.Probably Ken Loach should maybe start moving forward to the approach of social, cultural and religious problems in the present context because at the time of the Internet no organization will ever be able to prevent me to learn something and will reduce my learning to what they want me to learn only and nothing else. And yet exploitation, dictatorship and control exist more than ever. Maybe Ken Loach should start working on that theme.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU