Loach is angry. The 80-year-old, whose career documenting Britain’s social ills on film spans most of his adult life, is upset about the BBC interview he did just before meeting me.
Loach has made I, Daniel Blake, a film about one man’s treatment by Britain’s benefits system that left one critic in tears and won the prestigious Palme d’Or at Cannes, the biggest accolade for a director outside the Oscars.
But Loach says the BBC asked only about “benefit cheats and people getting benefits and not trying to look for work”. “I didn’t give them the answers they wanted, so it dominated the whole interview... Just repeating the same line of questioning,” he says after sitting down, adding the “substance” of his film was lost.
Joel Ryan/AP
Ken Loach (left) with Jeremy Corbyn (right) at the premiere of I, Daniel Blake in October
It feels like an understatement to say Loach is doing interviews to promote the film. It hardly needs it. Jeremy Corbyn told Theresa May to watch it during Prime Minister’s Questions this week. It was denounced as “monstrously unfair” by Damian Green, the minister now in charge of the system the film condemns. He hastily added he had not seen it.
For Green’s benefit: The film tells the story of Daniel Blake, a 59-year-old joiner who stops work after suffering a massive heart attack. His doctor says he is too unwell to work but the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) declares him fit to work. This makes Job Seekers’ Allowance his only option for benefits as he falls into poverty. But he will be sanctioned, with the money cut off, if he fails to prove he has been actively seeking work, which his doctor has said he is too unwell to take up.
Jeffrey Davies
