I, DANIEL BLAKE — THE CRITERION COLLECTION

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There wasn’t a dry eye in the Salle du Soixantième for the Cannes screening of Ken Loach’s brilliant social drama. 

The film corresponds to Stephane Brize’s “The Measure of a Man,” which played in competition at Cannes in 2015. That picture told of dire social conditions for France’s oppressed working-class. Naturally, Loach’s film (authored by his longtime collaborator Paul Laverty) is set in the modern day United Kingdom. Where “Measure” fell short of satisfactorily enunciating a conspiracy of unethical corporatized agencies whose clear purpose is to exile citizens to the fringes of society, Laverty’s obviously researched script delves deeper into the black market underground that people are forced into choosing.

We also witness the banal ways that modern bureaucracies conspire to abuse, humiliate, and weaken people’s daily lives. If you didn’t believe there was an international war on the working class before seeing this film, you will grasp that fact before the credits roll. “I, Daniel Blake” is a clarion call for the united sea change of social revolution represented by such humanitarian standard bearers as Bernie Sanders, Noam Chomsky, and Ralph Nader.

Using a cast of unknown (semi-professional) actors, Loach allows mundane social conditions that most of us are familiar with, to guide the escalating social drama. Colin Coombs gives a wonderfully contained performance as Daniel Blake, an experienced carpenter put out of his occupation due to a heart attack he suffered on the job.

A man in his mid-50s, Blake’s unfamiliarity with using computers proves a major obstacle in traversing the UK's intentionally choppy bureaucratic waters to maintain his “Employment and Support Allowance” from the government. Every government agent he encounters uses corporate double-speak to abuse him. Frustrating hours spent on hold are only exacerbated when he finally gets someone on the phone. Daniel Blake is in danger of losing his benefits because an unseen “decision-maker” has denied Blake’s doctor’s diagnoses that he is unfit to work. The state forces him to spend 35 hours a week looking for work that he can’t accept if, or when, he gets a job offer.

While at the agency fighting for his benefits, Blake witnesses Katie (Hayley Squires), a mother with two children in tow, being refused service because she was late for her appointment. Blake speaks up in Katie’s defense when security guards attempt to eject her from the building. The two political outcasts strike up a meaningful friendship as Daniel comes to Katie's aid in helping repair conditions in her unheated apartment.

Dramatically understated, and yet precisely composed, "I, Daniel Blake" breathes with authenticity and unaffected emotion. While some critics have a tendency to be dismissive of Ken Loach for his constancy of purpose, I would argue that it is this exact trait that makes his films so compelling. It takes a special filmmaker to maintain such constancy of purpose.

Long live Ken Loach.

KEN PARK

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It's ironic that Larry Clark's most cogent treatise on America's embattled relationship with its unwanted children will likely never receive distribution in the country of its origin. California's armpit town of Visalia serves as a breeding ground for suicide and familial abuse. With a script by Harmony Korine, Clark establishes the film's nature with a skateboarder named Ken Park who goes to a local skate park to blow his brains out on the sculpted cement.

The deceased "Krap Nek," as he was called by his friends, serves as an associational connecting point for his teenaged pals Shawn (James Bullard), Claude (Stephen Jasso), Tate (James Ransone), and Peaches (Tiffany Limos), whose separately enunciated personal stories point to greater social ills of the community.

Shawn is sleeping with his girlfriend's oversexed mother Rhonda (Maeve Quinlan) during the day while her husband is away at work. Rhonda's youngest daughter watches soft-core porn in the dining room while mom get busy with her adolescent conquest.

Claude clips his pregnant mother's (Amanda Plummer) toenails when he isn't dodging the wrath of his hateful alcoholic father (Wade Williams). He spends time hanging out with his pot-smoking skate pals in their clubhouse apartment.

Tate is a remorseless sociopath who can't conceal his furious contempt for his well-meaning grandparents or for his three-legged dog.

Peaches carries on a love affair with her well-mannered boyfriend who appears to meet with the approval of Peaches's religiously-obsessed widowed father (Julio Oscar Mechoso).

The identifications of social classes are significant the film's theme of endangered children. All of the kids come from lower class homes. Shawn spends most of his time at Rhonda's middle class house as an escape route that he constantly obsesses over. A post-coital conversation between he and Rhonda makes up one of the best scenes in the film because it directly speaks to the disparate motivations of both characters.

Larry Clark's cinema has, if nothing else, very specifically delineated the line drawn by the American court's decency standards under the Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act (generally referred to as "2257"). Without Clark adhering to the code, I could not have screened "Ken Park" at Manhattan's School of Visual Arts as part of their series on art and censorship.

Still applicable in the 21st century is Judge John M. Woolsey's 1932 decision that James Joyce's "Ulysses" was "not pornographic." One idea expressed during the trial, which took place between World War I and World War II, was if the content "made you want to throw up" then it was art; if on the other hand it sexually aroused the reader then it must be "pornography." 

While "Ken Park" is an example of exploitation cinema, it effectively pulls back the curtain on a pervasive aspect of American culture that a film like "Precious" deals with from an African American perspective. The eroticism in "Ken Park"— as when Claude's father molests him while the boy sleeps, or when Rhonda ties her boyfriend up to her bed — is there to explicate subconscious aspects of the characters' inner lives. It is a shocking film, but not one that should be banned.

Not Rated. 96 mins.