I, Daniel Blake
Director - Ken Loach
Writer - Paul Laverty
Starring - Dave Johns, Hayley Squires
"It's a monumental farce, isn't it? You sitting there with your friendly name tag on your chest, Ann, opposite a sick man looking for nonexistent jobs, that I can't take anyway."
Ken Loach's Palme d'Or winning I, Daniel Blake is an exercise in crafting sympathy for a protagonist against a supreme, uncaring, systematic antagonist. It is the tale of Daniel Blake (Johns), an old, but not-quite-elderly widowed carpenter recovering from a heart attack who finds himself not cleared for work from his doctors but denied Employment and Support Allowance by a "health care professional" who believes he is not ailing enough to qualify for benefits. Daniel finds himself repeated railing against the welfare system being thrown through various hoops until he can take it no more. This is at it's heart a simple, effective story where we as the audience feel for the plight of the common man against the faceless entity denying him what he rightfully deserves and yet, on the screen it doesn't quite work that way.
