Review: Gralton's Story Told In Elegant 'jimmy's Hall'

On top of leading a communist group in the provincial county of Leitrim in the 1930s, he incited fear in the ruling classes by running what they viewed as a particularly mutinous establishment: A dance hall. The history books may have yet to give his story a comprehensive treatment, but in "Jimmy's Hall," director Ken Loach and screenwriter Paul Laverty attempt to create a narrative "inspired by the life and times" of this unique man during a period when modernity was knocking violently against the pillars of the establishment. Loach's film opens with stock footage of New York at the time — where jazz, industry and skyscrapers abound in a vibrant and changing world — before jumping across the Atlantic to Leitrim, a bucolic and backward farming town. Loach, who won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2006 for "The Wind That Shakes the Barley" (which functions almost like a companion piece to this film), has given "Jimmy's Hall" a truly timeless feel with an easy, classical structure and aesthetic and some truly moving performances from Ward, Kirby and Norton in particular. While this deeply romanticized and fictionalized account of a little-known underdog might not serve you in any trivia capacities, it's also a worthy and loving story of humanity in the face of oppression. Jimmy's Hall," a Sony Pictures Classics release, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America for "language and a scene of violence.