Film Review: I, Daniel Blake, Proves We Are All Daniel Blake

Set in present-day NewCastle, Uk,  I, Daniel Blake, follows the man titled…. Daniel Blake. He is a 59 year old craftsman who has suffered a massive heart attack. Unfortunately, his health and unemployment benefits are randomly taken from him, despite having insurance and his doctor’s insistence that his heart is dangerously weak. Does this sad tale sound familiar? It should it is a common. For nearly 28 million Americans, it is the scary tragedy of their life; they are too poor to fall sick. Thus, to see that in the U.K. the commodifying of something as basic, necessary, and human as health will have viewers gasping at the global horror of systemic inhumanity.

Daniel Blake (played warmly by Davy Jones) is a good “bloke” as the his NewCastle neighbors describe him. He is a generous man that is there when anybody needs him, whether it be to help repair their home, pick up their mail when their gone, or even to give them some food because they are hungry. These are simple, kind gestures that prove the love in someone, but are, unfortunately, not placed in computer’s application for health and unemployment benefits. Maybe if the many government employees, Daniel comes across both acknowledged and worked in a system that sees human beings for their, they would not have been so heartless with that of Blake’s. Jones is so subtle, humorous, and vibrant as Blake, that you wish you could jump into the film, and advocate for his needs. The world should not reject this light soul, but it does. Thus, the tragedy of I, Daniel. Blake is that for 100 minutes you see a great person and citizen get unl-ovingly treated by his government.

From documents after documents to person after person, Blake must undergo a chain of insurance rejections that chip away at both his spirit and literal health. As his heart grows heavier, he meets Katie (played phenomenally by Halyley Squires) and her two children, whose struggle with money has left them going to bed for many nights in hunger. As her beautiful, but troubled family enter the picture, the face of urban poverty becomes too real, and will leave viewers crying and yearning to figure out how they can help. Squires plays Katie as desperate and exhausted by the constant hurdles of trying to provide for her children, but never managing to break the glass ceiling above her. She is a good, bright woman whom cannot win one, but that is what the audience sees. To the her government, or rather insurance, she is a mooch that needs to get her act together. The contrast is gut-wrenching, but powerful in igniting in viewers a sense of empathy for others.

Directed by Ken Loach and written by Paul Laverty, I, Daniel Blake, is one of the most humbling experiences I have had in theaters. It rawly captures the amount of spiritual pain and anguish that can overcome a person when they are poor and at the expense of insurance and welfare benefits. It is sad to realize you have no one to turn to that can help you, and I, Daniel Blake, does not sugar-coat this dark reality. On the contrary, it makes sure to show the harshness of having bad things happen to good people. I Daniel Blake won the Palme d’Or at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, and I see it winning many prizes in its future. I, Daniel Blake will be released in cinemas on October 21.