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I, Daniel Blake

by 58 Comments

Year: 2016
Director: Ken Loach

It’s sobering to think it’s nearly 50 years since ‘Poor Cow’ – featuring the dubious talents of one-time Led Zeppelin enforcer John ‘Biffo’ Bindon, a man so unpredictably violent even the notorious Peter Grant considered him a liability – introduced the unapologetically political filmmaker Ken Loach to the world.
What’s even more astounding is the fact that after half a century and numerous films portraying life in Britain, Loach’s work continues to represent a view of the country which is resolutely unjust, inequitable and painful to watch.
Such is the case with ‘I, Daniel Blake’, a movie which follows the plight of the titular character, a middle-aged carpenter who, after suffering a serious heart attack, is given the run around by a bureaucratic welfare system deliberately designed to discourage claimants through a combination of obtuse form filling and ritual humiliation.
Unable to access the sickness payment his Doctor has recommended, due to not scoring enough ‘points’ in an interview with a so called health professional, Dan is forced to justify his Job Seekers Allowance application by proving he is actually looking for work, despite there being little employment available and no work he could realistically do without seriously exacerbating his health.
Loach’s films don’t rely on complicated plots; rather it’s the characterisation and use of non professional actors which usually provide flavour and so it is here. In the lead role is Dave Johns, better known as a stand up comedian, who nonetheless delivers a magnificent, heartfelt performance as Dan, a moral, righteous and actually quite funny man drowning in a sea of red-tape. Equally good is the younger but more experienced Hayley Squires as Katie, the single parent Dan befriends after meeting her in a Job Centre where both are summarily ejected for the heinous crime of arguing for a fair hearing.
In accordance with Loach’s 50 year oeuvre, ‘I Daniel Blake’ is no easy watch, even though as both Dan and Katie are ground down by an unfeeling (and unseen) force represented by civil servants bound by the fear of losing their own jobs, there are genuine moments of laugh out loud humour. Told to go online to register an application, the non computer literate Dan responds to the adage, ‘digital by default’, with the genuinely funny line: ‘Yeah? Well I’m pencil by default’.
Critics of Loach’s work – and there are a few, currently represented by right wing media mouthpiece Toby Young – point to predictable aspects of the plot – and some of the story development is admittedly eminently foreseeable and slightly clunky. The consequences of Katie’s forays into the black economy can be seen a mile off for example as a very unsubtle McGuffin leads to a scene involving the two leads which came across to me at any rate, as being more than a bit contrived.
Another sub plot involving Dan’s neighbour selling hooky trainers is also bog standard stuff but at least it leads to a good laugh. During a Skype conversation with the Chinese supplier who turns out to be a huge football fan, ‘Stanley’ is asked who he thinks is the best player in the Premier League. To general amusement, he replies, ‘Charlie Adam, Stoke City’, the least glamorous player in EPL history and the scorer of the best goal ever by a bloke who looks like a bus driver.
These two plot diversions are more than compensated by a quite brilliant set-piece in a foodbank which is singularly the most moving scene I’ve watched in years. Perfectly shot and expertly captured it’s simply outstanding and worth the price of admission in its own right.
Without giving away the denouement, anyone with any pre Loach nous will know there’s no chance of any happy ending here, even though Dan’s personal fightback, such as it is, is stirring and heart-rending in almost equal measure.
I watched the movie in an otherwise empty Melbourne cinema and at the conclusion, sat in isolated stunned silence as the credits rolled and the lights came up, profoundly moved as I truly believe anyone, regardless of their own political beliefs would be. It’s that good.
In a time where frustration and disillusionment with traditional political non-solutions seem to be provoking a reliance on desperate, impractical measures, the integral message in ‘I Daniel Blake’ isn’t so much about answers as it is about humanity.
And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Might appeal to people who enjoyed:

Any of Loach’s previous. Or any work of substance.

5

Comments

  2. Nice review Gary. Looks like a must-see.

    Speaking of Poor Cow, with the lovely Carol White (who sadly died in 1991, aged 48), I went to see that at the cinema in 1967 simply because DONOVAN was performing the title song. There were three of his songs in the film in total thus proving incontrovertibly that DONOVAN invented grimy, kitchen sink drama.

  3. Thanks for the review, Garyjohn. Good stuff.

    Hold on a minute – I feel a list coming on!
    Oh my goodness, it’s the duco01 12 Greatest Ken Loach films of all time list. Oh yes it is!

    1. Kes
    2. My Name Is Joe
    3. Raining Stones
    4. Looks and Smiles
    5. Riff-Raff
    6. The Wind That Shakes the Barley
    7. The Angels’ Share
    8. Ladybird, Ladybird
    9. Looking for Eric
    10. Ae Fond Kiss…
    11. Land and Freedom
    12. Carla’s Song

    I’m glad he does what he does. And I hope that other directors will follow in his footsteps.

  5. I’m going to be the unwelcome voice of dissent and say I’d rather inject glass than watch a Ken Loach film. I suspect that I’d find the Loachian view of the welfare state just as skewed and one-sided as Benefits Street.

    • Actually he did a lot of research into the new welfare system before making the film. I haven’t seen it but from my own experience navigating the maze of new ESA and PIP assessments, their “providers” with tick-box culture and mammoth forms, woefully performing administration and “health professionals” – not to mention the DWP’s own “decisionmakers” – the description of the film as an individual’s fight against a complex, powerful and multilayered bureaucracy rings only too true. I agree that the system seems to have been designed to discourage people claiming, and frustrates people from appealing wrong decisions. In fact it often makes ill people a whole lot worse, even if this was not the original idea.

      • I’m actually awaiting my personal hearing after being pushed around all the way up to the tribunal courts. I haven’t yet seen the film, but a mate of mine saw it the other day and told me it is exactly like the problems I have been having.

        The process, since completing the claim form has been horrendous. It is absolutely designed to make people give up at every point, but it is just shocking that non-medically qualified people are making decisions about someone’s ability to work based entirely upon the report that their doctor or nurse gives them following the assessment they carry out. They request nothing from your own treating doctors (partly to save money, but mainly because your own doctors will be supportive of you).

        The assessment I had was a joke. The doctor was reading from a script. He wouldn’t let us record it, even though we now know it is our right. Then when we got a copy of his subsequent report we could see why. He lied in it, claiming to have done physical assessments that he didn’t do, he gave my answers to questions he didn’t even ask me, he reported observations that were totally untrue, he even got my illness wrong, even though I showed him a scan with a ruddy great big tumour in the middle of my spinal cord. One of the best ones was stating on his examination of my neck (he didn’t touch my neck) there was no tenderness. Well, I have no bone in the back of my neck, so I don’t know how tender he wants it!

        When I went through his report and pointed out all the falsehoods to the assessor their response was that they have no reason to disbelieve the doctor. It really has been soul destroying. But we do have some money coming in, as my wife works. My heart goes out to the people who don’t. For starters, they then have to pay for the report from their own doctor with which to challenge the decision, despite the fact that their benefit has been stopped. Furthermore, I am a trained nurse, so I understand the terminology, whereas most people don’t. And the report you get back from them is 20-30 pages long. It all repeats itself, but it must be very daunting for people who have never seen a report like this before.

        The government will point out the success of this system, by showing the reduction in numbers on the benefit, but I bet they wouldn’t share the numbers of suicides amongst unsuccessful claimants who have been tossed aside.

        • Sounds like a living nightmare Paul, hope it works out for you in the end. And of course it’s a deliberate strategy to discourage claimants and save money, a game plan only an amoral bean counter could consider a ‘success’.

        • Sorry to hear about your problems, Paul. After Carolina’s comment I read a bunch of comments about the film, all of which said how accurate the film was. Should have done that *before* posting here, obvs.

        • Sorry to hear about your experience, Paul. Sadly all too common. It is a horrendous process. People are shocked to read their assessment report and see the amount of untruths/fabrications in it. Then you go through the effort of pointing them out in first stage of appeal, it is totally ignored by DWP who rubberstamp 89% of original decisions, and take the assessors opinion rather than the persons own doctor. A lot of people give up by now, too worn down and ill by the system, but those that make it through to the tribunal stage (in front of 3 people questioning you, daunting in itself) do have a much higher chance of success, so keep fighting!

          I think the people they employ as health professionals must be sub-standard as those with any principles would probably leave. One person I know lost points at her assessment for everything because the assessor saw her use a tissue on her face (which obviously means she was fit to cook, do daily living tasks) and was able to sign her name! Another told the assessor he only ate toast and pasta. Which was written up as “makes bread and pasta” as if he was Jamie Oliver!

          My assessor bizarrely asked me if I knew what year we were in and who the Queen was but not any questions about my mobility, leading her to pick a wildly incorrect figure I could walk. and write total rubbish as her justification, eg. “cooking is not related to walking”. I don’t think she had actually read my the page on mobility I’d written on my form as it was on a separate piece of paper. Thankfully it did get sorted out without having to go to tribunal.

          • @Carolina, @Paul-Wad, your experience of the assessor’s lies mirrors my own. Mine, too, made false assertions on matters I hadn’t been asked about.

            I asked for reconsideration and appealed (at that time one could do both at once), waited and waited. The next I heard, some months later, was that the tribunal had granted my appeal without my having to attend (or even knowing that it was going ahead).

            The system is rotten to the core, and Paul has stated is set up for people to fail, regardless of their need.

            The very best of luck with your tribunal hearing, Paul.

            • Thanks. Obviously, what I wrote initially doesn’t tell half the story. For example, when I first went for my assessment (my wife took the day off to take me) and after waiting for an hour I got called in to a private room by the receptionist, who had quite merrily spoken down to everyone in full earshot of the waiting room for the previous hour, to tell me they couldn’t see me because I was down for a nurse assessment and I needed to see a doctor because I had a tumour, but I had only been put down for a nurse assessment. I pointed out that the tumour was the reason for all my problems and was clearly noted several times on my claim form, but it was obvious that the first time anybody had looked at my claim form was just as I was about to be called into the assessment. So I had to rearrange the appointment. I had no idea at this stage that they had not requested any information from my doctor.

              It gets worse. When I attended my GP to request the report I was told that they do not do this. Talk about being stuck between the devil and deep blue sea. After conversation with the practice manager

              As I mentioned, I’m a trained nurse, but I have spent the past 14 years in the employee benefits industry (unable to work as a nurse post-op), where I worked on the absence management side of things, helping manage people back to work, or helping them to get their group income protection benefit if it was not possible. At one stage I managed a team of Occupational Therapists and Physiotherapists, who carried out home or workplace visits and made recommendations regarding someone’s capabilities and the possibility of a return to work. Our aim was, first and foremost, to help our client (the company), as they were paying us, but it is impossible to do this without helping the individual, even if the help they needed wasn’t of the type they thought they needed! But I would have been mortified if any of the team produced the kind of report that I received.

              I know there are a lot of nurses who have quit working for the DWP because it goes totally against their principles, having trained to help people. It’s certainly not something that I could ever have done.

              As an aside, I have also undergone an assessment for my employer’s group income protection scheme. The insurer requested reports from all my treating specialists and sent an Occuptional Therapist round to my house to carry out an assessment. After all this they were satisfied that I was unable to work and that this is not likely to change, so my claim there has been admitted, even though the insurer has a much greater financial liability than the DWP have. They had, however, unlike the DWP carried out a full assessment. After the rubbish that the DWP physician wrote and the DWP staff came out with, I’m hoping that at the tribunal hearing I will meet someone who doesn’t have an agenda.

                • @nigelthebald, @pencilsqueezer, @carolina and @garyjohn, thanks for all the tips and advice. I used the websites you recommended in preparation and I’m pleased to say my appeal was successful, albeit I am going to have to start the process again. I have been placed back in the work-related component, but the judge said they are likely to limit the payments to 12 months due to means testing.

                  However, as I have deteriorated since the time that was under consideration (they were unable to take this into consideration) the judge suggested I should reapply in order to be considered for the support group. With hindsight, we realise that the doctor was pushing me to give him an answer that would have enabled them to put me straight into the support group, as he repeatedly asked me if I have to make repeated stops when walking to the school to pick the kids up. I ummed and ahed, because back in June I probably didn’t have to stop as often as I do now, so I couldn’t honestly have said that I did. It’s only afterwards that we realised that they were trying their best to get me to say yes, so we feel a bit annoyed with ourselves that we missed this opportunity. Especially when we thought about it more carefully on the way home, because there are two natural stopping points for me that I use to get a breather, when crossing a busy road and walking across the entrance to a busy lorry yard. So we wouldn’t have actually been lying. But with the deterioration we don’t need to lie when reapplying, even if we wouldn’t have been the first time!

                  The hearing was a much more reasonable assessment of my individual circumstances and we were surprised that the doctor spent a lot of time asking me about the original assessment with the DWP appointed doctor. We certainly get the impression he had a lot of sympathy for me having to go to tribunal.

                  We know what we are doing for next time though, but we are still fully expecting to have to go all the way to tribunal again, such is the attitude of the DWP. At the end of the next application we are hoping I can get put on the support group as much to be able to apply for a blue badge as much as anything. It’s not something we will need to use all the time, but sometimes in tight car parks I find it really difficult to get in and out of the car, so the extra room would be helpful and will save my wife having to drop me off and leave me standing waiting for her.

                  Anyway, thanks again for your help. It was very much appreciated.

                  • Good news Paul, or at any rate better news about the appeal. It sounds like you’re loath to play the game but remember it’s an entitlement not a benefaction.
                    All the best.

                    • Good news about the result, @Paul-Wad, though not the deterioration.

                      Best wishes for your new application – remember that the benefit is there to support you at your worst, so don’t stint in describing how the condition can affect you.

                  • Glad the appeal panel were a lot more sympathetic, @Paul-Wad and you were put in WRAG group. Sorry you will have to go through it again so soon, but at least you have learned a lot about the process so it should not be so stressful and you can honestly claim you have deteriorated. Make sure your medical evidence describes the deterioration with dates and details. Also you probably know that the Job Centre will be onto you to attend work-focused interviews and the like if they haven’t been doing so already because you are in WRAG.

                    One thing about the blue badge – Support group entitlement doesn’t mean you will be granted one, though if you are accepted as not being able to mobilize 50m you may have a good case. It tends to be PIP awards that give automatic blue badge entitlement, namely getting at least 8 points in the Moving Around descriptor. However different councils have different criteria for blue badges and people have got them by attending a medical done by the council without PIP awards, or any other, so it may be worth looking into your council’s scheme and see if they will give you a medical for it now so you won’t have to wait.

                    • Thanks for the advice. I’ll look into it.

                      Yes, the work related interview will be fun, because I already have a job and it is based in the next room to my bedroom. It’s sedentary, I have an ergonomic chair and my workstation has been ergonomically assessed, and I am allowed regular breaks from my desk. I have also had an OH Nurse from the company’s insurance company round to assess me at home and she came to the conclusion I am never going to recover sufficiently to be able to return to work, so I am perversely looking forward to hearing what the person I will meet at Barnsley Job Centre will suggest!

                      As it is, I am expecting the benefit to stop as soon as it starts, as my 12 months is up this month, so if they are means testing it and taking my reduced salary into account I am expecting them to stop it. Don’t know whether this will mean they won’t bother with the interview or not.

                    • @Paul-Wad Hope they will leave you alone once they realize that your 12 months is practically up. Also if they do want to see you, when you tell them you are putting in another claim for Suppport group as you’ve gone downhill hopefully they will back off. You will continue to get your National Insurance pension contributions paid even after the 12 month period is over as long as you are in WRAG (small comfort though that is!).

              • You’re right Paul. DWP mostly don’t request information from people’s GPs as they would have to pay for the report. Most GPs have a policy of not writing letters of support for people for benefit claims, some out of a mistaken belief the DWP would contact them, some because they would be too overloaded with work. So that leaves people stuffed, because they only have the assessors “evidence” for the decisionmaker unless they have obtained evidence themselves which they have paid for. I agree with Pencilsqueeser and Nigel, Benefits and Work are a great resource. The forum is free to read but you have to subscribe to get their detailed guides.

                I read up on their forum before my ESA and PIP claim,
                and got supporting evidence I had to pay for. Not that the PIP assessor took a lot of notice of it! But later on at Mandatory Reconsideration the DWP did. Also, like your experience the ESA people never read my form properly as they sent me an appointment for Christmas Eve half way across London when I had 2 doctors confirming on my form I’d need a home visit! That was a lot of stress sorting that mess out, I can tell you.

                I wish you all the best with your Tribunal hearing. It might be tough going through it, but you sound like you are more than equal to the task of answering whatever they put to you. I think the Tribunal members will be better informed and more open-minded than the other “professionals” you’ve had with your claim.

                • Thanks for the tips everybody. I’ll have a good read through those sites and will probably subscribe so I can get the best advice. One thing I didn’t feel the need to do at my assessment was “play up” my symptoms (you know, like a professional footballer), because I would think a doctor would see through it and with my history and all I didn’t think I’d need to. So it irks me when I hear of the tricks that some people use in that respect. Anyway, all I need to do to make me look like the tin man is to hoover the house the day before and “forget” to take my multitude of tablets!

                  • Unfortunately the assessments need to be something of a “show and tell,” It’s not so much that you need to play tricks, but the assessors have been trained to make all kinds of “observations” and base their decisions on those and if you don’t demonstrate in some tangible way what you are suffering from, the assessor discounts what you say and have written in your form. It’s very unfair. Even making any eye contact can go against you if you have mental problems, and people get criticized for having dyed hair or wearing jewellery and make up, or having a handbag with them! (Probably not a problem in your case I’m sure!) So going without your tablets for a day, as long as it won’t have any long-term harmful effects, is no bad plan if it will enable the panel to see the full effects of your disabilities.

                    • Some years ago I was involved in a Claimants Union which represented people at Tribunals – (this was back in the days of Supplementary Benefit) and we actively coached the ‘show and tell’ approach. Like Carolina says, the assessors have – had – a list of prompts they’re supposed to look for so it made sense to make sure the boxes were ticked.

                    • Fuuuuuuuuuuck……… just came across these posts, tucked into a film review I hadn’t read. And, you know, you are all correct in the myriad assumptions made as to the total corruption inherent within the process, designed to make it all as uphill a struggle as it can possibly be, as callous a process as could be imagined and as careless as could be considered. My experience of the process is all on the other side of the desk, as the victims of these crimes: yes, these are crimes and they are victims, come in to see me. The stories are much the same, usually involving the yet further rejection of a claim, the abrupt withdrawal of benefit, incomprehension, usually shared, as to how and why, confusion about whether there is any right of appeal and disconsolate despair. They ask what I wrote in my report. What report, say I, as no longer do DWP and their lackeys ever seek supporting information. I am not asked a view nowadays. The next question is will I, can I offer a view. Naively I used to comment that giving my name and my willingness to submit a report should be enough, as Carolina states above, until I realised DWP would never ask. Previously, with DLA and the like, this was routine, the receipt of forms in which I would then offer an opinion. PIP now expects the claimant to submit supporting evidence along with the claim. This may sound not unreasonable, until the numbers and the time required so to do is factored in. Yes, and the cost. Personally I feel it is a disgrace that people be charged to get such information, but the economics of modern general practice dictate otherwise. And all the money in the world does not buy the time that isn’t there anyway.
                      As for the Drs who do the DWP “medicals”? And all the other staff. Yes, they are often not the pick of the professions involved. Yes, they work to ridiculous bonus led quotas. Yes, they become dehumanised thereby, no excuse, just the self-same detachment that allows warcrimes to become second sense in other arenas. Those who can, leave. Those with no other option might not. Leave your conscience at the door, I was told by one.
                      Don’t get old and don’t get ill, I tell my patients. I retire early and exhausted in March.

                    • @retropath2 All too true. I hope one day it becomes the national scandal that it ought to be, how the system fails all too often at every level, and it is the sick and disabled who are suffering. Meanwhile I am sorry you are having to retire exhausted from the fray in March as you are one of the good guys.

  6. A friend put Riff Raff on recently….I think he thought I needed a Socialism reboot after arguing about Jeremy Corbyn. I found it pretty amateurish – film people arguing about Thatcher in an improvised way and call it social commentary. I do find he keeps exploring ways of saying the beedin’ obvious, and proceeds to lay it on with a trowel but, perversely, I’m glad he is there doing it cos no-one else will. I just don’t like his style.

    • Is he the Mark E Smith of cinema? i.e. he’s amassed a great pile of work as he’s been going forever, essentially doing the same thing, most people say they prefer the early stuff while only occasionally dipping into the “new”, but they’re also “glad he’s still there doing it” because he’s a national treasure of the type you wouldn’t want to be stood beside at the bus stop. Ken likes his ever-changing roster of actors to improvise their scripts; MES likes his band to write his music. I suppose the big difference is, with The Fall, Rachel pulls a lot more from the consonants pile – C n C Hassle Shmuck, that sort of thing…

  7. Will there be gangsters? There are always gangsters. Half-way through his films I always seem to be saying, “Oh here we go again with the bloody gangsters”. You’d think they were everywhere. They aren’t.

  8. I saw I, Daniel Blake this morning at a 10am showing. We were 2 of only 5 people in the cinema.

    It was just as desperately sad, anger-provoking and depressing as I feared, but still worth seeing for all that. It contains some truly heart-rending scenes (eg the young lass and her two kids driven to visit a food bank) as well as the now familiar and degrading tactic of keeping benefit applicants hanging on the phone for (literally) hours listening to the same shite “hold” music.

    In a way it made me very glad I no longer live in the UK where, certainly in the north, the gap between the haves and have-nots appears to grow wider by the years, regardless of which party is in power (and it won’t be Labour again in our lifetime).

    In British society it seems the “haves” are sitting relatively pretty, while as far as the government is concerned, the “have-nots” can go and fuck themselves. But, then again, it was probably forever thus.

    I hate to use the cliché, but I urge you to see this film.

  9. I think this thread wouldn’t be complete without a quick acknowledgment of the man who wrote I, Daniel Blake, The Angels’ Share, Looking for Eric, It’s a Free World, The Wind That Shakes the Barley, Ae Fond Kiss, Sweet Sixteen, Bread and Roses, My Name is Joe, Carla’s Song and other Loach films – Ken’s right-hand man and one of the great unsung scriptwriters: Paul Laverty.

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