{"id":9969,"date":"2016-09-25T11:30:43","date_gmt":"2016-09-25T10:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=9969"},"modified":"2016-11-10T12:37:42","modified_gmt":"2016-11-10T12:37:42","slug":"so-much-anger-so-much-pain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=9969","title":{"rendered":"So much anger, so much pain"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Ahead of the UK premiere of Ken Loach\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s latest film, I, Daniel Blake<\/em>, one reviewer called it<\/a> a \u00e2\u20ac\u015bjoyous, funny and moving portrait of man\u00e2\u20ac\u0165.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

At the heart of this portrait is the film\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s title character, Daniel Blake, and at the heart of Blake a 59-year-old joiner who, suddenly too ill to work, must traverse the bureaucratic heartlessness of the UK benefits system \u00e2\u20ac\u201c is, incongruously, a stand-up comedian, Dave Johns.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s his first feature film ever, and already Johns is being talked about as a possible Oscar contender for Best Actor.<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

UNITElive caught up with Johns ahead of his speech today (September 25) at the Real Britain fringe on the first day of the Labour Party Conference, hosted by Unite and the Daily Mirror.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWe talked mostly about football,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 Johns noted, recalling a conversation he had with Ken Loach when he was first being considered for the role.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bAnd of course, Ken being Ken, he wanted to know where I was from, about my family and so on.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

After a few auditions, Johns got the part and found himself immersed in an environment that challenged him like never before.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bHe wants the truth from his actors all the time,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 Johns said of Loach, who gave the film\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cast only two or three pages of script each day of filming.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bI had no idea what was going to happen at the end of the film. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why I think his films have such a real quality about them. Filming it was like living real life \u00e2\u20ac\u201c one day at a time.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The truth that Ken Loach has demanded of his actors is a truth that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s resonating with audiences not only here in the UK but across the world.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bAt all these festivals in Europe, everyone tells me that what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s happening in the film is happening in their home countries \u00e2\u20ac\u201c it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s happening in Italy, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s happening in Spain, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s even happening in America. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s this profound sense that working-class people have of being left behind and that the system we have, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not for them. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so much anger and so much pain.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

While Johns in many ways can inhabit the character of Daniel Blake from personal experience \u00e2\u20ac\u201c they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve both come from working-class families in the North East and have both worked in construction \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the actor has never had to sign on to the modern austerity-era benefits system as we now know it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0098Absolutely horrified\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bBefore I got involved with this film, I had no idea that benefits sanctions existed. The idea that you could lose your benefits for weeks if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re one minute late to a Jobcentre appointment \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and this happens to people all the time now \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I was absolutely horrified.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Before filming started, Johns recalled that Loach asked him to fill out the form that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s required to sign on to Employment Support Allowance for workers who are too ill or disabled to work \u00e2\u20ac\u201c all 52 pages of it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bI came back to him and said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0098I tried but I just couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do it.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s completely insane.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Johns believes that it is the ideological diktat of austerity that has turned the once robust and supportive welfare state into a Kafkaesque machine.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThe amazing thing about the system we have now \u00e2\u20ac\u201c it was set up to save money, but they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve ended up spending so much more funding the bureaucracy of it all. For example, by outsourcing the assessments to private contractors instead of being signed off by your doctor, the government is spending enormous sums of money that should be going to the people who actually need it.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more, the government\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s austerity agenda, propagated in drip-feed fashion by the media, has a way of completely transforming the way people see and understand themselves and their neighbours, John notes.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWith this system of benefits sanctions, with the stroke of a pen, anyone who signs on is immediately labelled a \u00e2\u20ac\u0098scrounger\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and this then sets the working class against each other. People who are in work think of the people who might need support, \u00e2\u20ac\u0098Well, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m working and they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re just lazy, why should I help them?\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The social security system of which Johns does have experience \u00e2\u20ac\u201c when you were supported if you were ill or there wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t any work, instead of being hounded by the department of work and pensions at every turn \u00e2\u20ac\u201c existed on the underlying assumption that people wanted to work.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bAnd that should be the assumption now because it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s true,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he argued. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bWe have to get rid of this vicious myth that people are inherently lazy and don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to earn money to support themselves and their families. If there are people who don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to work these days, it has more to do with what is available to them \u00e2\u20ac\u201c zero-hours contracts, these so-called flexible jobs that aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t proper jobs and only benefit the employer.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hope? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

To be sure, I, Daniel Blake <\/em>is in many ways a grim film that reflects the grim reality of our modern benefits system \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a system which often has fatal consequences<\/a>. But amid this darkness, is there any hope?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bOf course there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hope \u00e2\u20ac\u201c without hope we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re done for,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 Johns said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

He sees hope in the many young people who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve in only the last few years become deeply engaged in politics. He sees it too in the ordinary people he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s met during filming who run food banks out of a deep sense of conviction that they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve had enough of the way things are.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And viewers of the film will see that same flicker of hope in the tender friendship cultivated between John\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s character Blake and Katie, a single mother also caught in the benefits system\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s web. This friendship is a distillation of precisely what Johns says is largely missing now and what the working-class must claim back if we want the system to change \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a renewed sense of community.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Reclaiming that community among the working class, John believes, will necessitate a change in the public consciousness that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been moulded for decades by Thatcherite individualism.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWe need to counter all those negative stories drip-fed by the media about benefits cheats that only divide us, with positive stories like I, Daniel Blake, <\/em>stories that show that a welfare state that benefits all of us is a good thing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWe\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re now constantly told that life is just about \u00e2\u20ac\u0098getting on, getting on, never mind other people.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 But we need to reclaim the idea that there is power in collective participation \u00e2\u20ac\u201c through unions, through our local communities, through political action.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Of his speech at the Labour Party Conference fringe today, Johns says that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll \u00e2\u20ac\u015bleave the politics to the politicians.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m just telling my story from the perspective of a comedian, an actor and an ordinary person from a working-class family,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u015bI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m talking about how filming I Daniel Blake <\/em>fundamentally changed me and helped me see the bigger picture.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s this bigger picture that Johns hopes others will understand after seeing the film \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a bigger picture that all starts with one person\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s story.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThe film makes no apologies about its politics. But its politics come from the story \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the story of Dan and Katie trapped in the system and trying to get on with their lives.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a story that we are just one step away \u00e2\u20ac\u201c an accident, an illness, a job loss \u00e2\u20ac\u201c from it becoming our own story too, John notes.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In this sense, we are all Daniel Blake.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Watch Dave Johns speak at the Real Britain fringe, broadcast live online,\u00c2\u00a0 September 25 from 12:30pm-2pm here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ahead of the UK premiere of Ken Loach\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s latest film, I, Daniel Blake, one reviewer called it a \u00e2\u20ac\u015bjoyous, funny and moving portrait of man\u00e2\u20ac\u0165.   At the heart of this portrait is the film\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s title character, Daniel Blake, and at the heart of Blake a 59-year-old joiner who, suddenly too ill to work, must […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9968,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[76,491,625,464],"wps_subtitle":"Unite Live\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Hajera Blagg speaks to I, Daniel Blake star, Dave Johns ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9969"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9969"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10031,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9969\/revisions\/10031"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}