"If you saw [a description of the plot] on paper, it is a film about a bloke trying to get his sickness benefits – well, it is not exactly Die Hard 2 is it?"
So says Dave Johns, star of director Ken Loach's film I, Daniel Blake, with brutally self-deprecating honesty.
Loach’s hard-hitting critique of the welfare system in the United Kingdom is the first film to screen as part of the Diff365@Vox programme at Mall of the Emirates, which will present indie and art-house films that would not otherwise get a cinema release.
It is about as far from typical multiplex blockbuster fare as you can get. Then again, Die Hard 2 did not win the Palme d'Or, a Bafta for Best British Film, or any of the host of other awards showered on Loach's film since it had its premiere in Cannes last year.
Johns plays the title role of a joiner who is left unfit to do his job after a heart attack. At least, his doctor says he is unable to work. The “experts” in the Kafkaesque labyrinth of the UK benefits system think otherwise. As a result, Blake is deprived of his sickness benefits. He is also forced to spend his days surreally applying for jobs he cannot do, to qualify for a meagre unemployment allowance that is not nearly enough to live on.
Previously best-known as a stand-up comic, Johns makes his film debut here, alongside Hayley Squires as a struggling single mum he befriends as a result of their shared humiliating experiences at the job centre.
This is not feel-good stuff – Loach’s films rarely are – but Johns imbues the character with an easy charisma, with just enough humour to ensure the movie never becomes a dour political polemic. “Daniel is just an ordinary bloke and his humour is his way of coping with stress,” says Johns. “That humour keeps him going as he gets knocked back at every single turn. That stoic resilience and dark humour is the way he copes with hard times, like a lot of people.”
Johns’s performance is one of the film’s highlights and has earned him several awards, but he says much of the credit goes to Loach and the director’s regular writing partner, Paul Laverty.
“We were lucky to have Ken Loach as director,” he says. “He only gives you a couple of pages of the script at a time, just before you shoot it so you don’t have time to come up with any preconceived ideas of how to play a scene. It makes you play it in the moment – so you play it with the real emotion.
“He is very concerned with portraying the truth. He shoots chronologically, keeps the camera out of the way and minimal crew around, so you’re always in the moment. At times I forgot I was in a film.
“He believes the camera should be like another character, just eavesdropping on what’s going on.”
The script is the second vital piece of the puzzle.
“Paul Laverty is such a good writer,” says Johns. “The way he writes, you just think you’re watching real people.”
Despite his cheery manner when we are talking, it is clear the subject matter of the film makes Johns angry. “Did you know that 1.1 million food parcels were given away in the UK last year?” he says. “That is in one of the richest countries in the world.
“They’d rather work and contribute, but people fall through the cracks – and spreading this mindset that everybody who needs welfare is a scrounger is an easy way for those in power to justify cuts.”
The film has certainly provoked conversation. It has been discussed in the UK parliament, though many in power dismiss it as unrealistic, despite much evidence to the contrary.
“People say: Would you like to show the Tories [the ruling UK political party] the film?’” he says. “I agree with Ken here. He always says there’s no point. They know what the situation is because they created it, but they’ll never admit to it.”
Johns believes the power of the film to inspire change lies with ordinary people. “It’s got people talking and angry and engaged a lot of young people in politics,” he says. “People are looking at it and saying: ‘That could be my dad’. They are seeing that the system isn’t working and that the people who need the system aren’t scroungers and layabouts.”
• I, Daniel Blake is screening from April 20 until May 4 at Vox Mall of the Emirates. www.voxcinemas.ae
cnewbould@thenational.ae
