One thing I like in films, is subtlety. And the one thing that's missing in 'I, Daniel Blake', is subtlety. Ken Loach has made wonderful, deeply moving films about ordinary people, but in this case his personal anger prevails.
The film shows the uphill struggle of Daniel Blake, a carpenter with heart problems, to get the health benefit he's entitled to, but doesn't receive. He gets lost in a bureaucratic maze of incomprehensible regulations and hostile staff members. What makes it even worse, is his inability to work with computers. Now that in large organizations human contact is being replaced by online procedures, that turns out to be a major problem.
These kinds of difficulties are real and very troubling for many people. And Loach is right in bringing them up. I myself have experienced similarly maddening procedures. The tendency to move interactions with government institutions almost entirely to the internet, is causing huge problems for thousands of people.
But in his urge to show how disrespectful government institutions treat ordinary citizens, Loach is overdoing it. Daniel Blake and his neighbour, unemployed single mother Katie, are so miserable that it is no longer believable. Every imaginable misfortune is happening to them. In the end it becomes pathetic.
And that is a pity, because it is undermining the power of the film. It is a bit like a James Bond movie: Bond can narrowly escape death once or twice, but when this happens fifteen times it's not serious anymore. The same goes for the misfortunes of Daniel Blake. The point is that a James Bond film is not meant to be serious. But I'm afraid a Ken Loach film is.
The film shows the uphill struggle of Daniel Blake, a carpenter with heart problems, to get the health benefit he's entitled to, but doesn't receive. He gets lost in a bureaucratic maze of incomprehensible regulations and hostile staff members. What makes it even worse, is his inability to work with computers. Now that in large organizations human contact is being replaced by online procedures, that turns out to be a major problem.
These kinds of difficulties are real and very troubling for many people. And Loach is right in bringing them up. I myself have experienced similarly maddening procedures. The tendency to move interactions with government institutions almost entirely to the internet, is causing huge problems for thousands of people.
But in his urge to show how disrespectful government institutions treat ordinary citizens, Loach is overdoing it. Daniel Blake and his neighbour, unemployed single mother Katie, are so miserable that it is no longer believable. Every imaginable misfortune is happening to them. In the end it becomes pathetic.
And that is a pity, because it is undermining the power of the film. It is a bit like a James Bond movie: Bond can narrowly escape death once or twice, but when this happens fifteen times it's not serious anymore. The same goes for the misfortunes of Daniel Blake. The point is that a James Bond film is not meant to be serious. But I'm afraid a Ken Loach film is.