12th March 2017; Ken Loach's I, DANIEL BLAKE

I, DANIEL BLAKE 

A Film by  Ken Loach

2016/ UK/ 100 minutes

5.45pm/ 12th March / Perks Mini Theater

http://konangalfilmsociety.blogspot.in/

British director Ken Loach will be 80 years old in June, and he has worked in film and television for more than 50 of those years, but with his bone-deep empathy for the desperate and the downtrodden. “I, Daniel Blake” is one of Loach’s finest films, a drama of tender devastation that tells its story with an unblinking neorealist simplicity.

Daniel Blake, a  widower with no children,  has recently suffered a heart attack and receives an Employment and Support Allowance from the British state. But then, for no good reason, his benefits are denied; the state wants him to go back to work — even though his physician is on record as saying he can’t. The movie takes us through the agony of the appeals process, which is a much bigger nightmare than it sounds like. The story is told with stark and fierce plainness: unadorned, unapologetic, even unevolved. His one friend is Katie, the quick-tempered single mother whom Daniel befriends, becoming a gentle, grandfatherly figure to her two kids.

Daniel works to give the system every benefit of the doubt, until it insults his very being, at which point he has an impromptu “Attica!” moment. But it’s only a moment. The quiet beauty of “I, Daniel Blake” — the reason it’s the rare political drama that touches the soul —  is that we believe, completely, in these people standing in front of us, as Ken Loach and the actors have imagined them. And when the movie ends, we feel like we won’t forget them.  I, Daniel Blake is a movie with a fierce, simple dignity of its own.  (Source: Internet)

KEN LOACH

Ken Loach attended King Edward VIGrammar School and following two years in the RAF read law at St Peter's College, Oxford. In 1966 Loach made the socially influential docu-drama Cathy Come Home.  In the late 1960s he started directing films, and in 1969 made Kes. It remains perhaps his best known film in Britain. Loach experienced a miraculous, creative resurgence in the 1990s with the advent of Channel 4 funding and producers Sally Hibbin and Rebecca O'Brien. His recent films invest warmth and humour in their characters' plights while allowing political alternatives to develop naturally out of the narratives.

Ken Loach is a director admired, and often loved, all over the world. For his remarkable output, Loach has won numerous international prizes and long overdue critical recognition . Despite political ebb and flow, fickle artistic trends and film financing difficulties, he remains steadfast in his commitment to progressive ideals and a personal cinema. Loach's films are art of the highest order. While exposing the failings and limitations of human experience, they also provide a path to change and progress. His body of work firmly celebrates the fact that life is worth living.   (Source: Internet)