The Angels' Share

The Angels' Share Dir. Ken Loach (2012)

The Angels Share is a British Comedy Drama set in and around Scotland. The production Companies that worked on the movie are Entertainment One Sixteen Films, Why Not Productions, Wild Bunch, British Film Institute (BFI), Les Films du Fleuve and Urania Pictures S.r.l. 

Kenneth Charles "Ken" Loach (born 17 June 1936) is an English film and television director. He is known for his socially critical directing style and for his socialist ideas. Loach's film Kes (1969) was voted the seventh greatest British film of the 20th century in a poll by the British Film Institute. Two of his films, The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006) and I, Daniel Blake (2016) received the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, making him the ninth filmmaker to win the prestigious award twice. Loach was born in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, the son of Vivien and John Loach. He attended King Edward VI Grammar School and went on to study law at St Peter's College, Oxford. Loach's 2013 film The Angels' Share is centred on a young Scottish troublemaker who is given one final opportunity to stay out of jail. Newcomer Paul Brannigan, 24, from Glasgow, played the lead role.The film competed for the Palme d'Or at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival where Loach won the Jury Prize. Loach's 2014 film Jimmy's Hall was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or in the main competition section at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival. In 2016, Loach won his second Palme d'Or for I, Daniel Blake.

The title is from "the angels' share", a term for the portion (share) of a whisky's volume that is lost to evaporation during aging in oak barrels. This movie follows protagonist Robbie as he seeks to turn his life around after narrowly avoiding prison. He is sentenced to community service instead of jail time and while on his community service makes friends with unlikely people, he meets Rhino, Albert and Mo who, like him, find it impossible to find work because of their criminal records. However their luck soon starts to change when they go to a distillery and find out about an extremely rare whiskey which they soon learn could change their lives.

The use of camera shots and sizes in this movie, provides the audience with different feelings. For example, they camera is not on a rail following every movement made by the characters and it not cleanly shot, it follows the characters everywhere and gives the audience the sense that they are with the characters and are experiencing everything that happens in the movie. We also see loads of close up shots, especially at the beginning of the film which shows he audience the facial expressions and body language of the protagonists. The use of this type of filming shows us that it is more of a smaller produced film but it is still an effect filming method.

The use of Mise-en-scene also helps the movie. The use of the whiskey in the film is key to the entire storyline. The use of whiskey at the beginning of the film, when Robbie goes back to Harry's house after being beaten up in the hospital, they drink a bit of whiskey, then end up going on a tour of a distillery which makes Robbie realise he wants to explore his interest of it. We then end the film seeing Harry get back into his house and finding a bottle of an extremely rare whiskey that is worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, from Robbie as a 'Thank You'present.