I, Daniel Blake (15.)
Directed by Ken Loach.
Starring Dave Johns, Hayley Squires, Dylan McKiernan, Briana Shann, Mick Laffey and Harriet Ghost. 100 mins
Ken Loach is a director from over here doing rather well over there. Aged 80, he came out of retirement to make one more film about a decent man trying to get what he is due out of a callous, privatised benefits system, and came home with the Barn D'Or from Cannes, the second time he has captured the top prize. They love him over there. Over here we respect their passion and the invisible skill with which they are made, we are a little bit wary: like letters in brown envelopes, they never bring good news. And over the years the news has got worse and worse.
Daniel Blake (Johns), a Geordie carpenter doctors say cannot go back to work after a serious heart attack, who is informed that he is not eligible for incapacity benefits and then gets trapped in a system that describes him as a client but refuses to act for him. Ian Duncan Smith would not normally be a figure associated with great literary adaptation, but his reforms to the benefits systems have created of distillation of Kafka, much truer than that of Orson Welles.
Entwined in his story is that of Katie (Squires) a young single mum with two kids who has been gentrically cleansed from London, and forced to accept a flat in Newcastle, who Blake helps out because he's an averagely decent man. Loach is famous for getting great performances from non-professionals, and Dave Johns is so good in the lead role, so naturalistic and unforced, it is a bit of shock to find out he's done a bit of acting before, as well as stand up. Squires is just as good, but with her you can see the acting – it's the difference between reaching for an emotion, and just having it to hand.
This is standard operational Loach which is to say entirely without thrills or ornamentation, but heartbreakingly effective. Tears will be shed, and if they aren't it'll be because you're too angry, or too despairing at seeing the total collective failure of the last half century laid out before you. That's the thing about Loach films, they used to be funny, there used to be earthy working man humour in there. Not any more.
With Ken Loach the assumption is that you know what you are getting and that what you are getting hasn't changed much in half century since Cathy Come Home. But in one important and telling way it has. The week I saw this the Evening Standard reported on a Russian oligarch mooring his super yacht in the Thames, and how people who would previously have been considered well off are being priced out posh areas by the international super rich. Previously middle class audience could watch a Ken Loach with a disgust at what was going on below them. Now they watch with a fear that one redundancy or rationalisation could leave them in the same situation. We are all Ken Loach characters now.
I, Daniel Blake (15.)
Directed by Ken Loach.
Starring Dave Johns, Hayley Squires, Dylan McKiernan, Briana Shann, Mick Laffey and Harriet Ghost. 100 mins
Ken Loach is a director from over here doing rather well over there. Aged 80, he came out of retirement to make one more film about a decent man trying to get what he is due out of a callous, privatised benefits system, and came home with the Barn D'Or from Cannes, the second time he has captured the top prize. They love him over there. Over here we respect their passion and the invisible skill with which they are made, we are a little bit wary: like letters in brown envelopes, they never bring good news. And over the years the news has got worse and worse.
Daniel Blake (Johns), a Geordie carpenter doctors say cannot go back to work after a serious heart attack, who is informed that he is not eligible for incapacity benefits and then gets trapped in a system that describes him as a client but refuses to act for him. Ian Duncan Smith would not normally be a figure associated with great literary adaptation, but his reforms to the benefits systems have created of distillation of Kafka, much truer than that of Orson Welles.
Entwined in his story is that of Katie (Squires) a young single mum with two kids who has been gentrically cleansed from London, and forced to accept a flat in Newcastle, who Blake helps out because he's an averagely decent man. Loach is famous for getting great performances from non-professionals, and Dave Johns is so good in the lead role, so naturalistic and unforced, it is a bit of shock to find out he's done a bit of acting before, as well as stand up. Squires is just as good, but with her you can see the acting – it's the difference between reaching for an emotion, and just having it to hand.
This is standard operational Loach which is to say entirely without thrills or ornamentation, but heartbreakingly effective. Tears will be shed, and if they aren't it'll be because you're too angry, or too despairing at seeing the total collective failure of the last half century laid out before you. That's the thing about Loach films, they used to be funny, there used to be earthy working man humour in there. Not any more.
With Ken Loach the assumption is that you know what you are getting and that what you are getting hasn't changed much in half century since Cathy Come Home. But in one important and telling way it has. The week I saw this the Evening Standard reported on a Russian oligarch mooring his super yacht in the Thames, and how people who would previously have been considered well off are being priced out posh areas by the international super rich. Previously middle class audience could watch a Ken Loach with a disgust at what was going on below them. Now they watch with a fear that one redundancy or rationalisation could leave them in the same situation. We are all Ken Loach characters now.
