Grit and grace in a blue-collar world
I, Daniel Blake
(out of 4) Starring Dave Johns and Hayley Squires. Directed by Ken Loach. Opens Friday at the Varsity. 100 minutes. 14A “Say what things are like, because it not only breaks your heart, it should make you angry,” British filmmaker Ken Loach declared at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, paraphrasing the playwright Bertolt Brecht.
Loach, the 80-year-old lion of social realist cinema, does just that with I, Daniel Blake, the movie that earned him the Palme d’Or, his second. A surprise win of the top prize at Cannes 2016 — other films had been tipped to triumph — it now seems part and parcel of a worldwide populist uprising that includes the Brexit and Trump vote shocks.
Compassionate and often funny but unstinting in its critique of coldhearted bureaucracy, I, Daniel Blake stars well-liked standup comedian Dave Johns and rising talent Hayley Squires. They play struggling citizens who become friends by chance and allies by conviction when an Orwellian welfare system forces them to take drastic survival measures.
Johns is the titular Daniel, a 59year-old carpenter recovering from a heart attack and grieving the loss of his beloved wife. A likeable and generous bloke, as long as he’s not pushed, Daniel is slow to adapt to the 21st century — he doesn’t know how to use a computer.
Squires is Katie, a young single mom with two preteen kids, limited options and boundless determination. She knows she’s made a few bad life choices and wants to do better.
Daniel and Katie are intelligent and hard-working, but medical and family setbacks have left them both nearly destitute while unable to obtain sufficient social assistance. Katie and her kids Daisy (Briana Shann) and Dylan (Dylan McKiernan) were forced to leave family and friends and move north to blue-collar Newcastle from London, several hours’ drive away, because no suitable public housing could be found in their hometown.
In scenes both wickedly satirical and heartbreaking — a food bank scene is devastating — Daniel and Katie are put through the wringer of a Byzantine and dehumanizing welfare bureaucracy. The system demands they look for work even if they’re unable to do it (Daniel is under doctor’s orders), with few options to change or even argue their plight.
Screenwriter Paul Laverty, Loach’s longtime associate, based his fictional screenplay on real stories he gathered by interviewing people like Daniel and Katie across Britain. He and Loach found what they were looking for. They’ve made a film of empathy, grace and wit that goes a long way to explaining the populist anger so emblematic of these times.