Ken Loach remains a tireless militant filmmaker, a defender of the weakest, and a vehement critic of social inequalities in Great Britain. He does this consistently through human stories. “I, Daniel Blake,” winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes, is in this vein.
“I, Daniel Blake” is a powerful work that resonates with society’s outcasts.
The film is absolutely accurate, earning a well-deserved Palme d’Or last May at the Cannes Film Festival, the second for Ken Loach, at 82 years old. This director has been an indefatigable activist for 50 years.
He is one of the first to choose characters from the working class for particularly realistic social dramas. While the story of Daniel Blake is that of thousands of people, the strength and emotion of the film are bound to touch thousands more.
It is the story of a descent into hell, that of a man nearing retirement and a young mother caught in the Kafkaesque machinery of social services.
For the first time in his life, Daniel Blake, a 59-year-old English carpenter, is forced to seek social assistance following heart problems. But despite his doctor forbidding him to work, he is required to search for a job under threat of sanction.
During his regular appointments at the “job center,” Daniel crosses paths with Katie, a single mother of two children who was forced to accept housing 450 kilometers from her hometown to avoid being placed in a shelter.
Both caught in the webs of today’s British administrative absurdities, Daniel and Katie try to help each other…until the tragic epilogue.
