Ken’s clumsy lack of direction
THIS week the New York Times was forced to issue an apology after a review of a new Amazon TV series called Goliath criticised its ‘needlessly complicated structure’. It turned out that the reviewer had watched the first two episodes in the wrong order.
I felt a twinge of recognition here: some time back I was watching an online copy of a melancholy movie by a famous arthouse director, and was especially struck by a very long contemplative scene where a couple gazed lovingly at each other for what felt like an eternity. ‘Actually, it’s pretty brave to hang on to that shot for so long, and force us to contemplate the relationship onscreen,’ I thought to myself – then realised that it was actually because my internet connection had frozen.
Maybe there’s been a similar mix-up with Ken Loach’s latest movie – I, Daniel Blake – which has gathered rave reviews. I just don’t get it.
The film I saw was an earnest story of a carpenter who suffers a heart attack and is plunged into unemployment, bureaucracy and poverty.
It is a story of good and bad, black and white, inhabited by crude stereotypes, from dispassionately cruel JobCentre employees to a lovable martyr hero.
Loach’s sense of outrage is unmistakable, but so is his refusal to portray a rounded view of contemporary working-class life, with clumsy attempts at comic relief and lazy manipulation of his audience. No matter how much we may agree with the underlying points about the benefits system, this is by-the-numbers political film-making, and Loach should be better than that.