Friendly in the end, the elegance and softness of Ken Loach contrasts with the firmness in the defense relentless on the rights of the working class and the look always excited about the anonymous people. In his film there are no gaps or concessions that apply. In its 83 years, the director returns to the charge with Sorry We Missed You, a film that tells the story of the exhausting and difficult day-to-day of a family, mother, caretaker of the sick, father dealer self-employed and two teenage children, trying to survive in the jungle of the free market. His presentation at the last Cannes film festival caused a deep shudder, the same as when it was screened in the competition of San Sebastian, where it won the Audience Award for best european film. Sorry We Missed You, written again with his right hand, screenwriter Paul Laverty, will be premiered this Thursday in the concert halls of spain. In spite of everything that shows its cinema —Raining stones, My name is Joe and I, Daniel Blake, his second Golden Palm— is not a Ken Loach a man pessimistic. Believes in the strength of peoples and the future of the left. “The people always will resist. There will always be someone who will fight,” said the filmmaker in an interview conducted in September in San Sebastian.
Sorry We Missed You puts the look on the dealers self-employed subject to some draconian rules imposed by the e-commerce platforms. You do not want your director to talk about slavery —“the word slave has other connotations”— but of new and heinous forms of exploitation, a consequence of the free market economy. “Did only a generation ago you had a job and the employers benefit, of course, but it was a secure job, you could resort to the unions, you get sick because you were protected, you could go on vacation and you used to work about eight hours a day. Your salary allowed you to live in a dignified manner. What has happened, inevitable in a free market economy is that large corporations compete among themselves to sell their goods and compete with the prices. How do you get the price is cheaper than the competition? Very simple, by paying less to the workers,” he reflects. English, born in Nuneaton, does not believe that the Network itself has contributed to this grim situation: “the Internet is a tool of knowledge neutral and that is a great advance, but if used to monitor employees, as seen in the movie, is a disaster for the worker. It is not a problem of science, but of who controls the science, of the owners of the technology”.
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Though it does not finish the welfare State in Europe, it fires up your, always so quiet, though determined, given the lack of public resources for the popular classes and how private companies are facilitating the way to take care of a few services that should be run by the State. “There are two reasons for hope. The first is that the people always resist and always someone will fight. The second thing is that we live in a system that cannot continue over time. For example, if one thinks of the work of dispatchers who use petrol for their work when the oil has its days counted. We are destroying the small businesses in the centres of towns and cities, asking for and buying all by Amazon. Do you want to continue?”.
Rejects Ken Loach refer to his film in the singular and speaks with passion of all the wonderful stories that one gets to know. “I have to talk in plural because I always work with Paul Laverty. We are a team and that’s why I don’t like to talk about just me. The people that one gets to know in life is the one we used for inspiration. Look where you look, there are so many stories to tell, and what is more wonderful is to be able to count them. During the preparation of this film, we met women who cared for older people with a generosity and affection, far above what they paid”.
And, of course, comes out in the conversation the Brexit. “The Brexit is absurd because the big problems of the people as is the precariousness of the work, the poverty, the insecurity, the homeless or the public services collapsed is not going to solve. The Brexit is a distraction to not face the big problems in the Uk. It is a conflict between the two sides of the right, some who believe they need the european market, and the more extreme they want to get out of the European Union to pay less taxes and opening the market to united States.”
To succeed the Brexit hard, Ken Loach portends an even more unbridled capitalism in his country. “If we leave the European Union and the tories are in power, the Uk will become a big market of cheap labour, without any type of regulation, which will attract foreign investments towards public services. It is really worrying. The health system could fall into the hands of large u.s. companies. That is my biggest fear”.
despite all this, the director relies on the left of your country. He says that it is an example for Europe. “The left british is strong and united, with a leader, Jeremy Corbyn, totally opposite to what was Tony Blair, for his support of trade unionism and public investment, in addition to plant face to the problem of the environment”. For the first time in his life, he confesses, he can say out loud and with pride: “Follow the example of Great Britain. We have managed to eradicate the divisions of the left from that Corbyn is in power. Finally have the opportunity to achieve power. I never thought I could say this. Leave the egos, accept the differences and learn from Lenin, whose motto was “Land, bread and peace’”.
