I, Daniel Blake (15)

four stars

Dir: Ken Loach

With: Dave Johns, Hayley Squires, Dylan McKiernan

Runtime: 100 minutes

UNUSUALLY for a Ken Loach film, his latest picture, I, Daniel Blake, has been backed by the kind of marketing campaign more suited to the latest superhero caper from Hollywood. Is it because it is a Palme d’Or winner, or could it be that, at the age of 80, this is the great British auteur’s last hurrah as a director? On the strength of this outing, let us hope not.

As part of the publicity push, Loach sat down with Will Gompertz, the BBC’s arts correspondent, who asked him if people would not be put off seeing I, Daniel Blake, because they suspected it might be more of the same old Loachian fare. The director declined to lamp Gompertz for his cheek (that’s yer impeccable North London manners for yer…), instead pointing out that this was like saying people would have a problem with Jane Austen because she tended to write about the society of her time.

Gompertz had something of a point, though. From Cathy Come Home in 1966 through to Riff-Raff, Carla’s Song, My Name is Joe, Sweet Sixteen and many other titles, we have grown used to Loach attempting to right the wrongs of society on screen. Can he still have an impact beyond those who already agree with him? Again, we return to that commodity called hope.

I, Daniel Blake begins in despair and frustration. The titular Daniel (Dave Johns), a carpenter living in Newcastle, is trying to explain to a benefits assessor that he is recovering from a heart attack and is therefore limited when it comes to finding work. Cue his entry to a world of regulations, bureaucracy, and hanging on the telephone for hours, trying to speak to a real, live human being. It is a world that would have made Kafka weep. Daniel needs the system to survive but the system seems purposely designed to prevent or deter him from claiming the help to which he has a right. So what does he do? In the words of the hymn, he dares to be a Daniel ("Dare to be a Daniel; dare to stand alone; dare to have a purpose firm, dare to make it known").

It is while doing battle at the job centre that he meets Katie (Hayley Squires), a young mother of two who has moved north from London to find a home. Daniel befriends the family, doing what he can to help. Like two souls adrift in a sea of troubles, Daniel and Katie keep each other afloat, but it is often an exhausting, disheartening existence.

It is impossible not to feel sympathy. It is pretty difficult, too, not to be exasperated at times by the way Loach and his screenwriter Paul Laverty make their points. Subtlety is not always the first tool they reach for. Characters are painted with a broad brush, being either wholly good or entirely bad (an exception is made at the job centre, where everyone on staff is awful except for one woman). Moreover, there is little here that will not be familiar to anyone who reads a paper or watches the news. Broken Britain - it even made it into Theresa May’s first speech as prime minister, don’t you know.

That said, the sheer energy and conviction with which Loach and his cast press home their points has to be admired. While Loach and Laverty may take a sledgehammer to crack a system that would drive anyone nuts, they can also operate with scalpel-like precision, as in the section when Katie visits a food bank. That is one scene that will live long in the memory of anyone who witnesses it.

Loach, then, is still the best at what he does - speaking the truth to power on behalf of those whose voices are so often unheard. And he can still appeal to the head as much as the heart, demonstrating here the sheer cruelty of a system that hammers the poor more than it ever helps them. They might be centuries apart, but one suspects England’s Jane would have been a fan.