essay

essay.

Explain how economic contexts shape independent films. Refer to I, Daniel Blake to support your points. ( 15 marks )  30 minutes


I, Daniel Blake tends to contemporary British social issues, for example, neediness, the welfare framework and the Work Capability Assessment. The film depicts a gathering of customarily underrepresented characters in Newcastle battling in neediness to pick up advantages and backing. I, Daniel Blake passes on an unmistakable left-wing political message and censures explicit government strategies. Thought of the more extensive financial setting and idea of "gravity" may be helpful in investigating how changes to profit strategy had been defended.
 Financial variables including subsidising are incredibly noteworthy to this free British co-creation. The financing bodies are the BFI (through National Lottery Funding) and the BBC. 

“I, Daniel Blake” opens with a dark screen, and only the voice of a social worker interviewing Blake about his health and prospects. Back at his modest flat in a dreary postwar apartment complex, Daniel chides his neighbours for leaving their rubbish out, then continues his waron bureaucratic inertia while staying on hold for up to two hours in a Kafkaesque game of attrition.

A superficial reading of “I, Daniel Blake” might leave the impression that Loach and Laverty are critiquing Britain’s bloated and oppressive welfare state, but their true target is privatisation. The social workers and employment “professionals” Daniel works with at the jobs office are all hired by an American contractor. Efficiency, rather than efficacy, is the goal  in an operation that often seems cynically structured to guarantee enough shame, humiliation and frustration on the part of clients that they’ll ultimately give up, saving the “company” untold amounts of money and time.

But Daniel is not one to give up, whether he’s trying to become computer-savvy in a “digital default” world, or to help Katie, a young single mother he takes under his wing with alternately inspiring and heartbreaking results. A scene in which Katie breaks down in a food bank is but one of several small, shattering masterpieces that compose “I, Daniel Blake,” which brims with spirit, sympathy and candor as it tackles the catastrophic displacement brought on by economic and technological change.

As we’ve seen in the year since “I, Daniel Blake” premiered at Cannes, those changes have only become more pronounced, and consequential. Loach and Laverty don’t necessarily point out anything new in their film, which, in the end, succumbs to melodramatic stagecraft that detracts from the crystalline simplicity and clarity came before. But they have much to teach us, simply by lifting up resilience and compassion, and the inherent grace that lies in listening and responding to one another’s deepest needs.

“I, Daniel Blake” is about human value: disposable and abstract in one context; eternal, inviolable and sacred in another. They might underline the point a bit too thickly, but Loach and Laverty count on their audience to discern the difference, and to act accordingly.