(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
I, Daniel Blake
Directed by: Ken Loach
United Kingdom, 2016
During the recording of Jimmy's Hall, Ken Loach's 29. film, which in 2014 competed for the gold palm in Cannes, the producer expressed that this will probably be the director's last feature film. However, it would not take more than two years for Loach to find Cannes again, where he then went victorious with his second gold palm. The jury's decision to award the main prize to Loach during this year's festival was surprising and predictable at the same time: Despite its strengths, I, Daniel Blake the best film in the competition, but after almost 50 years as a filmmaker, Loach has accumulated a cinematography of a quality and scope that this year's jury probably found it worthy to award.
For Ken Loach has grown older – in June he is filling 80 – but the rage he feels on behalf of the many who fall outside the social and political system does not seem to have mitigated, at least not if we are to judge from his latest movie. IN I, Daniel Blake the title character (Dave Johns) is a 59-year-old widower who, after a serious heart attack, tries to return to life. Dan, as he is called by friends, is told by the doctor that his heart is too weak for him to return to work, so he turns to the state for help. The meeting with the social security system makes it clear that he, as a single resident and the sick, falls between two chairs in society: Health keeps him from working, but Dan is simply not sick enough to receive sick pay. When he meets single mother Katie (Hayley Squires) and her two children, it becomes clear that he is not alone in his situation, and over the next time they develop a warm friendship.
Orwellian forms. Through the absurd and disillusioning process Dan and Katie undergo to get help, the welfare system's flaws and blind zones are laid bare. The inhumanity of the system's inability to see the person behind the social security number is clearly drawn in Loach's vision of a system that neither seems to be aimed at living or disparate people, nor manned by them. Electronic forms hanging up, answering machines and perpetual telephone queues, bureaucratic phrases that are most of all reminiscent of Orwellian news – that is how you have to ask: Are there any people involved here?
The inhumanity of the system's inability to see the person behind the social security number is clearly recorded.
The system criticism is perhaps most potent in the film's exploration of the linguistic differences that underlie communication between Dan and the employees at the Social Security Office. As so often before with Loach's films I, Daniel Blake text in English – in addition to French – when it appeared in Cannes: His dialogues tend to be based on regional dialects that can be difficult to understand, even for Englishmen. Loach, who often makes use of amateur actors, has nevertheless advocated to keep these regional variations in the language, as he believes speech is often closely associated with the personality of the speaker. IN I, Daniel Blake this grip has great effect: Through its Northern English Geordie-directly, the individual Dan emerges, and set against the cool, often paradoxical language of the bureaucracy, the spontaneous, natural love that lies in his mention of those around him as "lass", "love" or "son" the more humane and accommodating .
Indignantly. Dan's love for the outside world is also expressed in action: He is a carpenter and body worker, and is used to everything being repairable. The services he provides for Katie's small family once again emphasize the gap between the rigid welfare system and the people it is intended for: When their power supply is cut, Dan goes for alternative solutions and covers the windows with bubble wrap, making small heaters of tealights and terracotta pots. Through these moving gestures, the worker becomes the real hero of the film.
The film's photographer Robbie Ryan has also collaborated with Loach on his two previous feature films, the aforementioned Jimmy's Hall og The Angels' Share (2012). This year he had another photo in the main competition – Andrea Arnold's excellent jury prize winner American Honey – who with their sensual, colorful images presented a picture of young, poor Americans who differed greatly I, Daniel Blakes sober social realism. When Loach explained during the press conference why he chose to go for just such an economical visual expression, he chose to paraphrase Bertolt Brecht: “And I always thought the simplest of words must suffice. When I say what things are like, it will break the heart of all. ”
But "to say things as they are" is also an art, and Loach turns out not to always be a master of subtlety: In scenes like the one where Dan for the first time hits a computer mouse, it's just before the director ends up in the superfluous and unlikely in their portrayal of a man whose time has run out. Katie's eldest daughter, who sometimes has to take on the role of an adult in the face of her exhausted mother, repeatedly comes up with insights that do not always sound like something a child would have said. And some audience members will probably see the portrayal of the protagonists' perpetual downward spiral as too directly depicted, too polemic – but it is nevertheless clear that when Loach turns to the broad brushes to paint his message, it is in outrage, not because he doubts the audience's ability to understand.
Strong emotions. When it still works as well as it does, it's because the play allows for subtlety. Both Dave Johns and Hayley Squires deliver strong starring performances, where fine-tuned, often mood-filled plays effectively balance the film's furious message. In particular, one scene in which a moment of absolute distress unfolds in a low-key manner at a food center awakens strong and contradictory feelings that remain long after the film ends. And that's what Loach wants: 50 years have passed since he directed the much-talked-about TV drama Cathy Come Home about homelessness in Britain in 1966, but the situation for the film's Katie has not improved. It is this insight that constitutes the film's hammering heart, and which does I, Daniel Blake for a touching and hard-hitting movie.
