Screenings

The Angel’s Share
In Scotland, whiskey (labelled “Scotch” in the USA), is traditionally distilled from barley malt, yeast, water and a dollop of peat (for flavor). It is then stored in oak casks for at least three years. “The Angel’s Share” is the small percentage of whiskey lost by evaporation during the aging process.
Scotch sippers are proud to be able to identify a particularly good whiskey as a single-malt or blend, how long it was it was barrelled in English or American oak, and which of seven geographical regions it calls “home.” You learn all this information in an original way in Ken Loach’s new Scottish movie The Angel’s Share.
The film opens with a very drunk man wobbling on a railroad platform as station security uses a loudspeaker to warn him away from the edge. “Step back,” says the disembodied voice from 19-miles away, “a train is coming soon.” Unfortunately, the drunk has turned around before following directions, and tumbles backwards onto the tracks. Scrambling out just in time, we next see him in the dock at a courtroom where a white-wigged judge is hearing a defense attorney’s request for leniency. The drunkard is just one of series of criminals appearing before the bench that day, and the one thing they have in common is being sentenced to “community service.”
One of these is Robbie (Paul Brannigan), a quick-to-take offense working-class man with a facial knife scar, whose past and future are pre-determined by grudges carried down from generation to generation. His “I won’t back down” mantra is being tested by his fondness for his pregnant girlfriend Leonie (Siobhan Reilly), and the fact that the girl’s father is the patriarch of the rival gang adds a Shakespearian twist.
The community service detail is headed by Harry (John Henshaw), and even though Robbie shows up late for his first day of work, the kind-hearted supervisor allows him to join the painting crew. The work is interrupted by a call that Leonie is having the baby, and Harry drives Robbie to the hospital. “Can youse come inside with me?” Robbie asks in subtitles, but the two never see Leonie. Instead, Robbie is severely beaten by her vendetta-fueled uncles who warn the new father to “keep far, far away…or else.” Harry is appalled by what happens and offers to testify. “We don’t snitch…never,” Robbie replies, so instead of going to the emergency room, Harry takes Robbie home for first aid and a meal.
It is after the meal that Robbie discovers a strange new world. Harry brings out a treasured bottle from the back of a cupboard and explains it is something special. “To the new parents and the new baby,” Harry toasts, and Robbie lifts up the glass. “Whiskey? I’ve never had whiskey.”
Harry becomes Robbie’s (and the audience’s) tour guide on the finer points of good whiskey. The education begins with that toast, and continues when Harry uses his day off to drive a few of the community service work crew to a distillery tour. The four who actually learn to appreciate the taste are an unlikely team. In addition to Robbie, there is Albert (Gary Maitland), the dim-witted drunk on the train platform, a tall redhead named Rhino (William Ruane) and a kleptomaniac named Mo (Jasmine Riggins). When they tag along on to a whiskey lecture, the four learn that a recently discovered barrel of ancient single-malt is to be auctioned for hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Like great Scotch, Ken Loach films are an acquired taste, and when The Proclaimers sing “and I will Walk 500 miles” on the soundtrack, the movie abruptly shifts from a sociological case-study to a light-hearted heist movie where the four friends don kilts as camouflage for the trip to the highland distillery on auction day.
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