I, Daniel Blake

The title emphatically states the hero’s affirmation of his identity and rights. He may be the helpless object battered about by the social system but he makes himself the subject of his own story. That's why he spray-paints his cause on the bureau’s outside wall — and evokes a chorus of citizen support..

The heartless muscle-bound social welfare system is a fair depiction of what happens when legislation turns its back on humanity. It’s the Alt Right’s dream come true, the objective of the Thatcher, Harper, Bush and especially now Trump governments. 

The scene where Daniel is offered a drink of water in the welfare office? The Tories removed the water coolers as an economy measure in 2010. So the reality in Britain is even worse than the tragedy presented here.

One worker from that office comes to Daniel’s funeral, But then, she sensed his vulnerability earlier and courted criticism from her “superior” when she tried helping him navigate the online form-filling. She was scolded for treating him as an individual, recognizing his individual needs, thus setting an unfortunate "precedent." Her coworkers take pride in enforcing their system’s insensitivity, always buttressed by The Law. 

As a good Leftie, director Ken Loach does not despair at the government’s inhumanity. Rather, he punctuates the official cruelty with periodic examples of individuals helping out, people being human.

In addition to that clerk, the department store manager personally intervenes to negate the security officer’s arrest of the shoplifter. His good deed is promptly balanced by the dubious assistance offered by that security officer, a part-time procurer.  

In the food bank scene Katie is treated most generously, not just with the abundant provision of supplies but by the staff’s kindness when she humiliates herself by ripping open a can of fruit, desperate from hunger. Earlier Katie went hungry to feed her helper Daniel.

So however bleak the situation Loach finds hope in the brotherhood of man. His neighbour and friend China may be a hustler and a slob but his offer of help is sincere.  

The hero’s name resonates. He’s another Daniel in a lion’s den, struggling to survive in the jungle of savage red tape.  Nature red in tooth and claw is now "civilization" red in tape.  The Blake recalls William Blake, the poet grieving the industrially stained London and the “mind-forged manacles” imposed upon but accepted by the broken citizenry. 

While the younger Katie pieces out a meagre existence Daniel’s resources steadily shrink. He loses his support payments, has to sell off his furniture, shrinking his life to a blanketed quiver. His dignity keeps him from the food bank. By the time he wins his day of appeal, and with salvation near, his heart buckles from the strain. 

True to the naturalistic tenor of the story, the social vision, the glamour-free casting and rhetoric-free performances, and the absence of consoling sentimental music, the film eschews the happy ending obligatory in American film. Blake’s death is as purely a release as Lear’s and the final condemnation of the system that privileges process over people. 
                                 

Here Loach’s heart and head seem to operate in sync. Not so in his joining the BDS-holes who would undermine the only democracy in the Middle East, the sole guarantor of religious, political, gender and civil rights, i.e. Israel.

As is common among the “useful idiots” on the Left, Loach responds with appropriate compassion to the suffering of the Palestinians. His error is in defining its cause. What his prejudice prevents him from realizing is that this horrible suffering is the fault not of Israel but of the Palestinians’ own elected tyrannies and their determination to waste generation after generation of their own lives in their hope to eradicate the Jews. 
     After all, the Palestinians could have had their own prosperous, healthy and secure independent state at any time since 1922 — if they had only accepted peaceful coexistence with the Jewish state. They have persistently rejected that peace. So, when Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and the Palestinians had the chance to prove themselves a responsible state, they instead promoted their genocidal intention anew, firing hundreds of rockets at Israeli civilians and building invasive tunnels to attack. Supporting the Palestines against Israel only advances their abusive enslavement by their own government.