‘We’ Daniel Blakes…?

Piyush Roy

Every now and then, comes a film that not only makes a statement, but also states it loud, concise and clear, as a necessary warning and an advice, notto be ignored.

Octogenarian British filmmaker Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Blake, the latest toast in British cinema, is one such film. It won the international film festival circuit’s most prestigious honour of the year, the Palme d’Or, for a British film in years. The highest award at the Cannes film festival has always celebrated any cha llenging or reimagining of the nature of cine matic storytelling. Shock has been a virtue, while conventional drama has generally been ignoredespecially if seen in the context of recent Palme d’Or winners. However, a message has always been appreciated, the more obtuse, abstractand searching, the better. In that latter attribute, I, Daniel Blake, is an exception. It states its concern – poverty in the developed West – bang on, from the first frame, and nails it big time, almost like a crucifix that a conscientious viewer will leave with. It is a no holds barred, no beating around the bush survival struggle tale of a protagonist, that common average bloke down the street, a good man and ‘a citizen, who the state drove to an early grave’!

Predictably, the film has courted some detraction, like any good debate, in its home nation, the UK, because it records, analyses and reveals the nature and impact of poverty in the developed world sans any sugar coated homily. Its capturing of the unseen psychological impact of poverty is indeed a revelation. For a poor person with some supposedly guaranteed state privileges, compromising with or losing one’s self-respect is far more debilitating vis-à-vis a counterpart in similar situation in a developing or underdeveloped country, where the poor often, just have no rights, forget any state guaranteed security.

When the film’s affable aging protagonist, Daniel Blake, has to repeatedly queue for social securities that are his guaranteed right in a welfare economy; that hit on the ego for a self-respecting man has killer impact. In his efforts at retaining sanity through falling personal grace, the film suggests a possible subtle correlation between the UK’s rising numbers of mental health patients to its arguably crumbling welfare state promise. It also offers an indication into the world of a Brexit voter, not necessarily racist, bigoted, divisive or even ill formed… but that of a good man, who when pushed to the limits, has to take an extreme, uncivil stand, to just be seen and heard in non-negotiating circumstances. The cry of the marginalised is unambiguously articulated in Daniel Blake’s epitaph speech (shared here), which in the truth of its concerned articulation of a local angst becomes a universal plea that could have been made by any disadvantaged citizen in any mammon worshipping social structure, capitalist, communist or mixed, that has been systematically failing its people.

In one of the movie’s most poignant scenes, a young white single lady and mother of two, collecting her quota of free ration from a community free food centre is so overcome by hunger that she opens a can of raw tomatoes and starts munching them grotesquely spilling all over while still in the queue to the exit. Her personal shame shocks her very existence to its core. It morphs into an emotional catastrophewhen her young daughter becomes aware of her mother’s embarrassment, as the system, neighbours and a friend lend a supportive hand and ear. The lady has been given a home, given by the state, but she has to fend for her meals. She is not a beggar, she wants to study and get a decent career. Eventually she joins an escort service, triggered from an immediate need to be able to her daughter a decent shoe to school. We have seen that plot turn before in Basu Bhatatcharya’s Aastha – In the Prison of Spring. But there is something far more sinister and disturbing at play here.

Being poor in a rich nation not only attacks the physical state of being, but also cripples the spirit with a sickness that’s often cured, only with death!

Hope lies in the neighbourhood, the community of those in the fringe, the insistence of a good Samaritan to help another fallen one. When Daniel Blake shuts himself from the world, unable to face the insult of his poverty, his neighbour, the young mother of two barges into his reluctant loneliness with a simple argument, ‘Didn’t you help us once? Then how can you stop me from helping you now?’

She rushes to the aid of a good neighbour who gave her wings that money can’t buy. But it’s too late! Daniel Blake dies just when he is all prepared, finally, to fight a winning battle against an uncaring system that’s been treating the likes of him like an unwanted customer, a free loading service user, a burden, a bothersome national security number… His last letter to the state read out at his funeral ceremony is a hard hitting shout of the mass demanding an acknowledgement of their existence.

No wonder, wearing an ‘I Daniel Blake’ batch has become a protest fashion accessory for passionate believers of a need for change across the UK these days. No wonder, I, Daniel Blake, is no longer just a film that makes you think but also ask, agitate and want to do something to change. More importantly, it is a well-researched, well-documented and well-told human drama that offers some concrete, empathetic understanding into what it means and what all it takes to be poor in a rich country. This concretisation of an abstract emotion into a human lament that is universal in its impact, is what makes I, Daniel Blake an important drama genre experiment; a must watch and an important artistic protest and a plea for the return of some genuine Leftist utopia in a year, the Right has been rising across the globe!