The trials and tribulations of the lower middle class on the English shores are at front and center in Ken Loach's brilliant film, I, Daniel Blake. Playing an elderly blue collared worker with a weak heart, Dave Johns gives a subtle, powerful performance full of inner anguish and frustration as the titular protagonist who keeps getting denied his unemployment and disability benefits until he pulls a subdued, British style Howard Beale protest, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take it anymore!" in form of a graffiti demonstration, spray painted on the side of the very building that's been rejecting him and countless others on a daily basis.
There is also a struggling single mother, Katie (Hayley Squires), who looks like a British Mila Kunis, and whose desperation and misery are mirrored appropriately by Blake's own deteriorating existence and impending poverty. As Daniel befriends Katie and her two children, he finds a newfound purpose, a beacon of salvation and hope he hasn't felt since his late wife's passing. I, Daniel Blake is a gut-wrenching ballad about the lost souls barely holding on to the remaining shreds of decency in an establishment that is clearly not interested in their salvation. It's a rare masterpiece that everyone should see, regardless of their geographical location or their monetary status.
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