I, Daniel Blake (2016)

Film: I, Daniel Blake (2016)
Stars: Dave Johns, Hayley Squires
Director: Ken Loach
Oscar History: No nominations, but it did pick up the Palme d'Or
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

I will admit right now that Ken Loach is one of those "prestige" directors whom I don't really get.  I have seen a few of his films, but never been taken with him in the way that you would expect from a cinephile, and it's occasionally hard to wrap my heard around him being one of only eight directors who have won the Palme twice.  Let's just say he hardly joins his fellow title holders Michael Heneke or Francis Ford Coppola in my personal favorite filmmaker's list.  But as I am putting a close on 2016 on this blog, and will be in June starting to tackle the year for the OVP, I wanted to also see the film that won the other major cinematic honor that year, and so I went venturing back into the world of Ken Loach.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie starts with Daniel (Johns), a man nearing sixty who has recently suffered a heart attack.  As a result, his doctor says that he is not fit to work, but an assessment to gain access to welfare (I'm American, and this is very much a film focused on UK social issues despite the US clearly having similar issues, so if I accidentally Americanize some of these terms I apologize) is denied saying that he is "fit to work," and so Daniel is stuck trying to pursue work but knowing he can't get work because it is deleterious to his health.  He meets a young woman named Katie (Squires) who is struggling as well, having just moved out of a homeless shelter and is living in Newcastle because it's too expensive to live in London.  The film follows the two as their situation worsens, with Daniel continually humiliated by a lack of understanding of technology & having to apply for jobs he knows he can't accept, while Katie eventually starts shoplifting and becomes a prostitute to be able to keep her home for her two children.

The movie's powerful and raw, and I get why this is a picture that was celebrated at Cannes.  Considering the personal politics of some of that year's jury (Donald Sutherland, George Miller, Kirsten Dunst), it's hard not to see them recommending the film as much for its social issues message as they did for its content.  The film is a telling indictment of the UK welfare system, blaming a lost generation of working poor on government bureaucracy and out-of-touch politicians.  It's hard to look at Daniel's struggles and not want to do something about it, and this is not exclusively a British problem-it's also an issue that the United States struggles from, where we make it nearly impossible for the benefits we provide for people that are struggling to actually get to those people, therefore saying we're helping when practically-speaking we aren't.  It's a worthy goal, and on that lens I'm glad I, Daniel Blake received such attention (it was even called out on the floor of Parliament by Jeremy Corbyn against the Conservative government).

But the actual film itself isn't particularly good.  The acting is fine, but the problem with social issue pictures is that they are so heavily reliant on expository dialogue and underlining the political points that the film is attempting to make that it usually feels more like a lecture than a natural film.  The movie so heavily wants to chronicle the journeys of people like Katie and Daniel that it's hard not to wish that they'd just done that, making a documentary about real-life individuals rather than sticking to a relatively flimsy, predictable narrative.  The movie itself screams important, but it's never particularly compelling or good and is so matter-of-fact that it's hard to mourn with the people on the screen; if anything, you're mourning because these people are placeholders for all-too-real individuals who suffer the problems of Daniel and Katie everyday.