Director hopes movie about poverty makes you angry
British director Ken Loach wants to break your heart and make you mad with his latest film
It’s been 50 years since British director Ken Loach first tackled the topics of poverty, homelessness and unemployment in the BBC teleplay Cathy Come Home. He finds it “shocking” that his newest film, I, Daniel Blake, is covering the same ground.
“There’s a conscious cruelty in the way we’re organizing our lives now,” he said at the Cannes Film Festival, where I, Daniel Blake, just had its world premiere in competition for the Palme d’Or.
Research he did with writer Paul Laverty for the film revealed stories of “revenge evictions” of poor tenants who complained about housing conditions, abuse of mentally and physically disabled welfare recipients and unofficial targets at the British DWP (Department for Work and Pensions), to sanction those on the dole.
I, Daniel Blake, tells the story of two unemployed people. Katie (Hayley Squires), is a single mother who has just moved to Newcastle and is cut off from benefits as a punishment for being late for her first DWP meeting — her reason being that she got lost in a new city. Daniel (Dave Johns), is a 59-yearold carpenter who has been told by his doctors to take time off work after a heart attack; nevertheless, his DWP caseworker expects him to look for a job.
Johns has never been in a film before, and mostly works as a standup comedian, a background made clear in the film’s very funny opening scene, in which Daniel gets exasperated with a government health-care practitioner asking him redundant questions.
“People’s response is very human,” said Loach.
“There can be a comedy to it. There can be deep frustration, pain, despair and survival. It draws out all the human emotions, but the heart of it is a shocking, shocking policy.”
Loach says these emotions begin in the writing and take shape in the performances. “Often people write stories about people who are suffering, and they’re miserable all the time. That’s not the case. You go to the food bank or wherever and there’s laughter, there’s comedy, there’s stupidity, there’s silliness and warmth. And that’s the reality of people’s lives. If you cut out that sense of humour and warmth, you miss the point.”
Case in point, Loach’s 2012 film, The Angels’ Share, also written by Laverty, a caper comedy featuring out-of-work Scots.
The director referenced a quote from the German writer Bertolt Brecht: “When I say what things are like, it will break the hearts of all.”
Loach added: “It should not only break your hearts; it should make you angry.”