I, Daniel Blake is a Ken Loach film about a Newcastle joiner who can’t work but faces a welfare bureaucracy that won’t listen, humiliates him, grinds him down, so it’s fun, fun, fun all the way. Yes, it is that Ken Loach film, but as that Ken Loach film is more powerful than most other films — and this is fearsomely moving (I cried), and fearsomely tender (I cried again) — you’re just going to have to suck it up.
It has been 50 years since Cathy couldn’t come home and 47 years since Billy buried that bird at the bottom of the garden and while Loach has strayed into other genres — the magical realism of Looking for Eric, for instance — his best work has always captured the daily lives of ordinary people whose heart, humanity and humour are their only weapons against a system that plain doesn’t care. This is what is captured here, and while there are moments of simplistic sentimentality, its intimacy and naturalness mean you never feel as if you’re being played. It won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and is written by Paul Laverty, Loach’s long-time collaborator who has said that one of their starting points was the fact that the British public believes 24 per cent of welfare payments are claimed fraudulently whereas the official estimate is 0.7 per cent. I forgot to say: this is fearsomely shaming too.
The film stars Dave Johns as Dan, who is 60-ish, has suffered a heart attack and has been told by his doctors that he can’t return to work for now. He has to sign on. As a self-reliant man who has always ‘paid my dues, never a penny short, and proud to do so’ this is a first, and he finds it degrading.
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