I,
DANIEL BLAKE is an acclaimed film by directing and writing
team Ken Loach and Paul Laverty. It tells the tortured odyssey of
Daniel and Katie through the benefit system in Newcastle, in the
north-east of England, where he is a local, while she and her two
children are incomers from London, castaways on the desert island of
Poverty.
It's
a hard watch, no doubt intentionally so. The scenes in the food bank
are visceral and telling. The best achieved in the film. The scene in
the CV workshop is chilling; the statistics and the put-down; the
many workers, in the Job Centre Plus and associated settings,
prepared to operate the monstrous system, often besuited or
be-uniformed, using a discourse of 'work, assistance and sanction' in
one and the same breath. It is Kafkaesque, yes; chilling, confusing
and all too real in its detachment.
Images
of Daniel Blake, played brilliantly by Dave Johns, trudging about the
city centre, around building sites and small industrial units are a
far cry from the world of work glamourised for the digital denizens
of multi-coloured offices, filled with latte-swigging workers,
lounging on jelly-bean filled bags.
The
film is a forensic detailing of the experience of one man grieving
for his late wife, coping with illness and loss of work and income,
who makes time to respond to the needs of a young woman and her two
children. It is a frightening account of ageing, desperation, illness
and isolation, underlining the truth of the old Simon Community tv ad of how close individuals are to destitution. Two wage packets,
was it?
As
in many of the duo's films, gestures to art and imagination are
important. In this case, there is the wonderful graffito on the wall
of the Job Centre Plus, which leads again to sanction (a brush with
the law and a police caution) rather than concrete assistance. There
are also Daniel's crafting efforts with waste wood. And a great
performance gesture in scenes with a chorus of hen-party revellers
and dole claimants, who cheer the soliloquy by the man, who offers
Daniel his jacket and castigates the arresting police officers,
saying that they too will face job losses due to rampant
privatisation.
All
the principals are accomplished and the supporting cast, though not
detailed in any great depth, are credible, in particular Sharon Percy
as Shirley in the Job Centre Plus.
The
film-makers are parsimonious with hope. The workers in the employ of
the state and their outsourced agencies are brutalised and brutish,
indoctrinated rather than educated. Is there hope for the children?
Not obviously. There are the sterling efforts by the food-bank
workers to be humane; the attempts by some Job Centre Plus staff to
assist.
The
dominant discourse is offered by the market. This is tragic, given
that the market has proven itself inept and dangerous, unable to
meaningfully deliver decent lives for citizens. The mantra 'let the market decide' delivers what it does; saleable goods for short-term
profits. Daniel Blake can't sell his labour, his skills, experience
and utility, due to illness. He sells his last assets, a few sticks
of furniture. Katie has none and resorts to using the only asset she
has: her self. She makes her choice, with pain and then endures, with
pain. There is humiliation, yes. It is a commonplace.
The
speech by Katie at the end, delivered with power and eloquence, is
telling. Does it offer hope? Or confirm the desperation? It bookends
the theatricality of the opening, where voices only are used. At the
end, a soliloquy given in 'direct address' to the camera and the audience, asserting
the rights of citizens is the best the film-makers can offer. When
the story is so desperate, when hope is absent, does film-making
break down? Do the film-makers lose heart and resort to the great
gestures of theatre? Tragedy. Speech. Words. The face, in close-up,
as film's grand gesture. Defiance and dissent. Alone.
I,
Daniel Blake
is another wonder from Ken Loach and Paul Laverty. It is a story of
today, a universal story rooted in the north-east of England and
reaching internationally. Hence, the awards. It tells the story using
the
forms
of realism,
forms well used by the film-makers in the
past,
worrying
to the
cinema-goer that we merely
watch and consume vicariously,
as we would any of today's omni-screen offerings. Two early-teen
girls left the
screening
after an hour. The
cinema-goer was
not surprised. The first hour is formidably left-wing and
educational and, arguably, it needs to be, in the face of the
dominant neo-liberal discourse. It gets going when the conflict between the two characters gingers up on an economic decision the young woman makes.
In
interviews around the time of the making of the film, people
involved took hope from the arrival of Jeremy Corbyn as head of The
British Labour Party. So did the cinema-goer. Polling figures for The
British Labour Party are not good, even among older people, Ken
Loach's peers and the people most likely to vote.
The
day following the viewing the cinema-goer had a conversation with a
middle-aged woman who works in a café. She is caught in the JSA/ESA
trap as her casual contract will not be of any use as she faces
surgery on her feet, worn out by years of work.
Enduring
seems to be the only option now, for Daniel, Katie, her children and
their fellows in the country. The tragedy of living on JSA/ESA is
well told and the desperation is not shirked. That a wealthy society
should get to be like this is obscene. Any wonder Gary Lineker,
ace-footballer, patriot and tv presenter could tweet, in a related
context about 'utterly heartless treatment' to young refugees and
that the cinema-goer can wonder with the footballer
'What
is happening to our country?'
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