A comparison between I, Daniel Blake (2016) and Sorry We Missed

You (2019) by Ken Loach

Gabriela Broinizi

I, Daniel Blake and Sorry We Missed You are two films made by Ken Leach that
take place in the city of Newcastle, in the north of England and that were released over a
few years, dialoguing with each other due to the almost documentary realism that the
director chooses to portray the transformations of capitalist society, as the formal choices
that come close and allow a reflection on the loss of fundamental rights and the
precariousness of work in England nowadays.

The two films, as the director himself said in an interview1, act as complementary
pieces, and start in the same way, with the voiceover and a dark screen, so we hear
people's voices as we get acquainted with the main ideas that will be discussed in the
films, that is, bureaucratic relations. In I, Daniel Blake the beginning revolves around the
interview that Daniel needs to grant about his health condition and in Sorry We Missed
You the bureaucratic relationship of a job interview.

The two films also focus on family cores, although their constitution takes place
in very different ways because, while in Sorry We Missed You the plot takes place within
a traditional lower-class English family - composed of a father, a mother, and a teenage
girl and boy - in I, Daniel Blake, the family is formed from class solidarity, being
composed of a single mother who has two kids from different fathers and an old man
who, by showing empathy for the mother's situation, creates an emotional bond with her
and the children.

Outside these affective cores, what we observe are relationships that for the most
part do not go beyond bureaucratic contact with the exception, in I, Daniel Blake, in the
supermarket scene, where the manager also creates class solidarity with Katie, when
saying “Katie, it's between me and you. It has nothing to do with the store, all right? They
are paid for” and the relationship between Daniel and the public service attendant, who
shows empathy with him, situations that indicate some class consciousness of these

1
https://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/be-angry-ken-loach-on-sorry-we-missed-you
workers who in Sorry We Missed You are reduced even more, because the only passage
where it is possible to visualize a more human relationship, beyond the family nucleus, it
is precisely the quick interaction that Abby has with a woman at the bus stop.

The containment of human relationships is indicative of their replacement by non-

personal ones that are also reflected in the containment of physical spaces, where the
camera increases the capture of walls, reducing the space the characters have to move
around so that locomotion is emphasized as something difficult to accomplish, which
appears in the form of a metaphor also due to the presence of a dog that does not have
one of its paws and appear walking with difficulty in both films. This is because the idea
of stuck movements suggests the impossibility of fulfilling the wishes and needs of the
central characters, who go through the film looking for things they can not reach.

There is a desire in the two films to return to a previous state, which is blocked by
the installation of more cruel bureaucratic practices. In I, Daniel Blake both Daniel and
Katie had better financial conditions in the past that were made more difficult by
government decisions, as well as in Sorry We Missed You, in which it is possible to
understand the family's desire, mainly from the angle of the younger daughter that things
were as before when time was not the same as money. However, what we see is actually
a very clear possibility that both families regress not to the previous state where they had
better living conditions, but that they regress their own living conditions through the
withdrawal of rights and the precariousness of work, justifying, in this way, as well the
choice of Ken Leach for frameworks that suggest the restriction of these citizens in the
present space.

This choice also reflects the idea of false freedom, that is, in I, Daniel Blake,
Daniel apparently has the choice of opting for unemployment insurance as well as
reconsidering his health insurance, but in practice what we see is an elderly person with
heart problems who have no other income and need to face the state in search of their
most basic rights. At the beginning of Sorry We Missed You there is a speech by Ricky
that takes up one of the main focuses in I, Daniel Blake, reinforcing the idea that there is
no choice of Daniel to not take the unemployment insurance, since when Ricky is asked
in a job interview about having already taken out this insurance, he replies that he has
proud and that he would have to go hungry first, revealing the way British welfare
programs are viewed, that is always used as a last resort by the population, which means
Daniel did not really have a choice, so the capitalist logic of freedom does not apply to
him.

The same is true in Sorry We Missed You, which unveils the new neoliberal work
system that promises freedom while enslaving its workers with the false notion of
entrepreneurship, by selling the idea that they can be their own bosses “you don't work
for us, you work with us ”. However, the reality that emerges is excessive working hours,
no employment links, security and rights, revealing the exploitation of these workers in
today's society.

David Harvey in “Monopoly and Competition” transcribes the phrase by the

economist Joseph Stiglitz, illustrating very well the reason why the English population is
dealing with social setbacks “There are two ways to become wealthy: to create wealth or
to take wealth away from others 2” in a way that rent-seeking is, as Harvey says, a polite
way to accumulation by dispossession. In practice, what means an attack by neoliberalism
on the rights and services of the population because, since it has the transfer state funds
for the maintenance of monopolies, what we see is an enrichment of people who were
already rich while the poorest are deprived of their basic rights. A process made difficult
so many people give up in the middle, as Daniel's neighbor says. That is, what we see in
the films are precisely what Harvey calls “the demolition of a wide range of democratic
rights, including economic rights to pensions and health care, and free access to vital
services (…)3”.

In I, Daniel Blake, this demolition becomes very clear through the main
character's struggle to gain access to health insurance and through the lack of support the
government provides for a single mother and her children, to the point where she needs
donations to feed them in addition to prostituting herself to maintain the house, indicating
a lowering of the condition of the woman who also appears in Sorry We Missed You, as
Abby does not have the conventional eight hours of work, she needs to disguise the smell
of work with pomade on her nose and she had to sell her car so Ricky can buy the van.

2
HARVEY, David. “Monopoly and competiton” in Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism. Oxford
& New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Page 132.
3
HARVEY, David. “Monopoly and competiton” in Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism. Oxford
& New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Page 134
 However, in Sorry We Missed You there is an aggravation of the demolitions of
fundamental rights because even though in I, Daniel Blake the character dies without
having access to his benefit, the fact that his speech is read posthumously raises a spark
of hope about a possible change through collective union and class consciousness, once
his voice passes through the other, which is also composed of children, who carry in
themselves the hope of the new.

In Sorry We Missed You, labor relations have worsened to the point that there is
the enslavement of workers in the system that is sold as a liberal, that is, without rights,
time off or legal backing, to workers who enter this new type of employment, there is
nothing left but to sacrifice their own lives for the maintenance of large monopolies that
enrich and expand further, with which they have no connection but at the same time they
carry the responsibility for failures. For Ricky there is no other way to survive, he needs
to subject himself to postmodern slavery so he and his family do not end up like many
English people who, in recent years, have become homeless precisely because of public
policies that annihilate social rights, as Ken Loach shows, who through the film's own
names reveals the worsening precariousness of work and the loss of hope that it carries.

Thus, in the first film I, Daniel Blake there is a "self" that gives the movie its name
and fights for the non-annihilation of its basic rights through the graffiti scene. In Sorry
We Missed You, on the other hand, there is the erasing of the self in the plural “we”, which
represents the communication between a transport company and its customers, resuming
the idea of the bureaucratic relations that prevail and that, this time, it is more critical
because there is no dialogue, just a message that is left in the name of a company for
which the worker provides services but with which he has no link.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

I, Daniel Blake (2016)

Sorry We Missed You (2019)
HARVEY, David. “Monopoly and competiton” in Seventeen Contradictions and the End
of Capitalism. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.