I, Daniel Blake: A film by Ken Loach

Virgilio Fantuzzi, SJ / August 2017, Vol. 1 no. 7 / Published Date:14 August 2017/Last Updated Date:29 July 2020

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Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 2016 Cannes Festival, Ken Loach’s film expresses indignation over the lack of respect for those on the margins of society in the United Kingdom. An elderly carpenter suffers a heart attack and is forced to resort to public assistance. He falls into a Kafkaesque network of control that renders his life impossible. He meets a single mother with two small children who are also forced to endure all kinds of humiliation. The solidarity between these people is not enough to raise them from their state of poverty. Instead of addressing the needs of the weakest, society today seems to regress to a cruel 19th-century logic where hunger is used to tame even the most ferocious of animals.

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