- Title: Ken Loach back at Cannes with searing take on English life on the breadline
- Date: 15th May 2016
- Summary: CANNES, FRANCE (MAY 14, 2016) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) DIRECTOR, KEN LOACH, SAYING: "I don't know, again it's complicated. I'm optimistic in people's capacity to fight back but in the short term there's so much to do and not enough people to do it so I don't know, I try not to be pessimistic."
- Embargoed: 30th May 2016 16:51
- Keywords: Cannes Film Festival Ken Loach Britain
- Location: CANNES, FRANCE / VARIOUS UNKNOWN FILMING LOCATIONS
- City: CANNES, FRANCE / VARIOUS UNKNOWN FILMING LOCATIONS
- Country: France
- Topics: Film
- Reuters ID: LVA0044HX4219
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: Fifty years after "Cathy Come Home", director Ken Loach is back showing the bleak reality of English life on the breadline in "I, Daniel Blake" at the Cannes Film Festival.
The BBC television drama "Cathy Come Home" saw Cathy and Reg evicted from their home after he lost his job. In "I, Daniel Blake", Dave Johns plays a downtrodden Newcastle joiner (Dan) who is seeking disability welfare benefit and drifts into poverty along with single mother of two Katie (Hayley Squires) whom he is trying to help.
Loach and screenwriter Paul Laverty conducted extensive research before starting to shoot and what they witnessed left the 79-year-old director morose.
"We went to my home town in the Midlands and met a number of people who were in trouble," Loach told Reuters in an interview.
"We met one lad who was living in a charity room and he had a mattress on the floor he had nothing in his fridge, no food, and the week before he hadn't eaten for four days."
A long-time engaged and enraged director, Loach finds it hard to be optimistic.
"I don't know, it's complicated," he said. "I am optimistic in the people's capacity to fight back but in the short term there is so much to do and not enough people to do it. I try not to be pessimistic."
The film sees Katie, who will slide into escorting, eat out of a tin can in a food bank after she was forced to starve herself to feed her children, while Dan prefers to sell his furniture rather than accept a friend's money.
Although the story is bleak and the image, nicely crafted by cinematographer Robbie Ryan, is pale and unfussy, Loach adds touches of humour in Kafkaesque situation. As Dan almost manages to fill an unemployment form on the internet -- there is no other way, even for a 59-year-old who does not own a computer -- after several failed attempts and eventually with the help of a young man at the library, the computer freezes.
"It's frozen", the young man says. "Well, can you defrost it ?", asks Dan.
Both actors feel a rage against the British government that they've managed to contain on set as they play characters who never lose their dignity throughout the story.
"The film has been researched by Paul Laverty who is the writer and basically all the scenes come from small little real stories that he was told. People who had actually experienced this. What was shocking to me was the sanctions the somebody can be late for what reason they can lose their benefits when they need it. It's just demonising people who are struggling, and I think that's happening all across Europe that people are saying we've had enough of this, we've had enough, you can bail out the banks but you can't bail out people who are on the breadline," said Johns.
While "I, Daniel Blake," depicts a British situation, Loach is confident his message can have a universal reach.
"You have to be specific, you can't film generalisation," he said. "Like in the little film we did you have to be specific, like the time, the place, the people, the culture, the accents. But the common denominator then becomes apparent." - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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