Those who categorise Ken Loach films as bleak have the initiative of an echo.
Watch the first three minutes of his latest picture, I, DANIEL BLAKE and I defy you not to piss yourself laughing. And watch the last three minutes and I defy you not to cry.
By golly, what more can we ask of a film-maker than to make us laugh and make us cry, to coerce a rallying cry from the audience, that we are human, and are worthy of respect.
No wonder the jury at Cannes went nuts for this film. It is a universal truth that bureaucracy is the Ebola virus of society, a virulent virus that eats rationality, common sense and compassion, and I, DANIEL BLAKE puts the punitive streak of bureaucracy into a beaker and turns up the Bunsen.
Set in Newcastle, I, DANIEL BLAKE concerns the titular tradie who suffers a heart attack on the job and is advised by his doctor to rest up. A worker not a shirker for all his 59 years, it goes against the grain to apply for State benefits but he has no option.
A joiner and carpenter, he is Internet illiterate, and finds it incredibly difficult to navigate his way through the reams of forms and documents required to access and acquire his benefits.
And those within the system prepared to help him are admonished by their superiors, a mindset of “it’s a waste of time aiding time wasters”.
Surreal except its all to scarily real, state welfare becomes an oxymoron, and the bureaucracy becomes a blunt instrument to bludgeon the vulnerable. Officials become officious, bureaucrats become bullies, decency and empathy asphyxiate in the toxic atmosphere of public servant – another oxymoron- rigidity and red tape.
Despite all his personal woes, Daniel finds time to assist a single mother suffering a similar plight of pitiless beadledom.
Written by long term Loach collaborator, Paul Laverty, I, DANIEL BLAKE boasts a brilliant big screen debut by stand up comic, Dave Johns in the title role. Honest, heartfelt and hilarious, it is one of the most powerful and truthful performances to grace the screen this year.
Funnier than recent Woody Allen, more absurd than Ionesco, I, DANIEL BLAKE begins with a phone call and finishes with a funeral, but there’s a hell of a lot of life and living in between.
It is visceral and, in many ways, virtual, to most. Substitute your own name in the title and the vicarious makes a Venn diagram with the virtual.
I, DANIEL BLAKE will make you solemnly swear.