The Navigators
Director: Ken Loach
Country of origin: United Kingdom
Release Dates:
Italy: September 3, 2001 (Venice Film Festival)
Canada: September 8, 2001 (Toronto Film Festival) (premiere)
US: February 21, 2003 (NY)
Running Time: 92 min
Genre: blue-collar drama / documentary
Language: English / Yorkshire accent
Producer: Rebecca O'Brien
Screenwriter: Rob Dawber
Composer: George Fenton (Music Score)
Awards:
Ragazzi e Cinema Award (Venice International Film Festival - 2001)
Cast:
Dean Andrews (John)
Tom Craig (Mick)
Joe Duttine (Paul)
Steve Huison (Jim)
Venn Tracey (Gerry)
Andy Swallow (Len)
Sean Glenn (Harpic)
Juliet Bates (Fiona)
Summary
One morning in 1993 as they arrive at work, four railway workers learn that British railways has been privatised and consequently, they will no longer work for British Railways but for East Midland Infrastructure. As the film unfolds, the workers realize all the implications of privatisation: better paying jobs, but also more instability and less security. As profitability becomes the buzzword, the company shows no real concern for the workers’ welfare. Things come to a head when one of them, put under too much pressure because he needs to meet his work contract, overlooks the safety rules and gets seriously injured by a train at night.
The film begins as a cheerful genre comedy, opposing workers to executives and ends in a somber tragedy, in which even fellow-workers prove to act in their self-interest only.
References
Ken Loach is a British television and film director, known for his social realistic style and socialist themes. He became renowned for his docu-dramas, notably the socially inspiring Cathy Come Home (1966). He started directing films in the late 1960s, and made Kes, the story of a disturbed boy and his kestrel, adapted from the novel A Kestrel for a Knave by Barry Hines. In the 1990s, Loach produced a series of critically celebrated and popular films, such as Black Jack (1979), Raining Stones (1993), Land and Freedom (1995), My Name Is Joe (1998). During this period he was also awarded three prizes at the Cannes Film Festival.
In his docu-film McLibel,Loach directed the Courtroom Drama reconstructions of the longest trial in English history. Loach won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival for his film The Wind That Shakes the Barley on 28 May 2006.
Loach's film work is characterised by its realism. Loach succeeds in making the characters look and sound real: The ‘Navigators’ seem to be genuine Yorkshire rail workers interacting without any script.
Loach is known to cast non-professional actors who have some actual experience of the background and characters portrayed, which led some professional actors to pass themselves off as the working class types he was looking for in order to get hired by their most admired director!
Rob Dawber: The screenwriter. He used to work in the railway-construction industry which provided him with useful data when he came to write The Navigators (2001). He died of asbestos-related cancer.
The movie was released in Europe but first only screened on TV in the UK in the context of the British rail crisis. Inquiries were being conducted at the time into serious derailments and badly maintained rails with significant loss of life, which had led to an emergency plan of repair causing mounting company debts: Railtrack (a group of companies owning the entire British railway system) was put in receivership by the Transport Secretary in October 2001 before being sold to Network Rail (October 2002).
The title chosen by Loach is a tribute to the original ‘navigators’, shortened to ‘navvies’, who constructed the British railway system in the nineteenth century. In 1845 200,000 men were building 3000 miles of railway line. One third of them were Irish migrant workers, employed across Northern England, who sent money home in the context of the Great Hunger. Their presence caused unrest in Victorian England mostly because of their willingness to accept lower wages. The anti-Irish riots reached a climax in 1846.
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