Socialized Medicine

I, DANIEL BLAKE (B) - Old lefty Ken Loach goes for the heart and the gut, shoving politics in your face with this bleak tale of a senior citizen navigating the UK's safety-net system, with the title character bouncing back and forth mercilessly between the soulless health care bureaucrats and soulless unemployment-benefits counselors.

Loach ("The Wind That Shakes the Barley," "The Angels' Share," "Kes") knows how to push buttons without being obvious about it. But here (with frequent writing collaborator Paul Laverty), his tone is a bit off, and he spins a riff on Job's suffering that in the end preaches, if not screeches, to the choir.

Daniel Blake (a sodden Dave Johns) is recovering from a heart attack and has been ordered by his doctor to abstain from work. This parachutes Daniel into both the public health care system of northeast England (Newcastle, near Scotland) as well as its unemployment division.  He is supposed to actively search for employment but he is medically barred from taking a job, though the bureaucrats in Public Health run him ragged through the red-tape wringer. (His struggles with the internet are epic.) He keeps sane and busy through wood-working.

The phone system keeps him on hold for 45 minutes at a time. In person, the government workers give him mostly blank stares and more of the runaround, except for one, Ann, who, on the sly, defies her bosses and expresses human concern and empathy for flabbergasted Daniel.

During one office visit, Daniel stands up for a single mother of two, Katie (Hayley Squires), who is desperate for shelter and enough money for food. She is denied benefits because she was late for her appointment. Daniel helps them get settled and slips Katie a few bucks to cover the next few meals. Squires, with big, expressive eyes, wrings a good amount of healthy pathos from a woman constantly in the throes of desperation. A scene of her being so hungry that she binges on handouts from a food kitchen before leaving the pantry is visceral and heartbreaking.

But Loach caricatures both the noble poor folks and the heartless government drones. Katie gets lured into questionable ways to make money (while retaining that heart of gold). Daniel is an absolute saint, even showing patience with his young slacker neighbors who are defying the capitalist pigs by selling knock-off sneakers on the black market.

At his wits' end, Daniel turns to open defiance of the system and public protest, becoming a local folk hero to the oppressed proletariat. With Daniel deified, Loach then unleashes a brutally bleak ending that would make even the most optimistic movie-goer slump in his chair during the end credits.

If only it were so easy to sort out the good guys from the bad guys.