At the 69th Cannes Film Festival in 2016, "I Am Black", filmed by British left-wing director Ken Lodge, overpowered the highly popular "She" starring Isabelle Huppel and the poetic "Patterson", which won the highest award at the Cannes Film Festival, the Palme d'Or, becoming a dark horse in Cannes.
Through the meticulous and very down-to-earth depiction of the difficult life of the British people at the bottom, the film breaks the inherent prejudice of ordinary people against the "receiving benefits" group, and then criticizes the serious "institutionalization" and sharp class contradictions of the operation of British society with a small view.
The film's entry point is both familiar and unfamiliar to Chinese audiences with a slight disdain for "eating relief". The protagonist, Blake, a carpenter, is 59 years old, widowed, childless and childless. He had to stop working because of a heart condition and apply for a social assistance allowance.
At the beginning of the film, Blake and the benefit evaluator have a 3-minute black humorous conversation, and the evaluator is like a machine asking ridiculous health assessment questions according to the rules and regulations, which is very "smart" to prove that Blake is still capable of working, thus disqualifying Blake from social assistance, so Black has to start a long road of appeal.
He had no income but to apply for employment benefits, but this required Blake to keep looking for jobs, and when he was successful, he had to push off the job because he needed to appeal for proof that he could not work, which in turn led to the inability to obtain employment benefits.
The "rules of the game" like the "Twenty-two Rules" of "If you can prove that you are crazy, then you are not crazy" make the rope around Blake's neck tighter and tighter, and Blake is not willing to be played like a monkey, resists, and finally dies suddenly in the appeal process due to a heart attack.
In the film, Blake plays the multiple-choice question "Shark and coconut who kills more people" with Katie's son? The child answered the correct answer: coconut, the little boy is innocent and does not know the reason for the answer, in fact, this is not the fate of people, fighting with sharks still has a certain chance to escape, but the coconut that fell from the sky hits the head is fate, can not escape.
When the film portrays the protagonist Blake, there is also a paradox at all times: he is a typical "man", as he wrote in his suicide note: "I am not a lazy man, not a thief, not a beggar thief... I do not bow to the powerful, I treat others with sincerity, I lend a helping hand as much as I can, I am a citizen, I have no luxury, no compromise."
In the story, he shoots a case to help the Katie family, has been fighting for his rights according to the rules, and finally angrily writes a slogan on the wall of the social security institution to prove the principle he has adhered to all his life, but such a person is actually a representative of the marginalized people in society:
He has always followed the rules, but he is ignorant of the emerging office equipment and is overwhelmed by official forms, applications, and training. Because they had to follow the rules, they had to turn to their black neighbors who had always been unruly.
In addition to Blake's main line in terms of plot line, the film also sets up a side line section to add a little human care to the atmosphere full of critical irony: Blake accidentally helps a single mother with two children, Katie, Katie also almost missed the affordable housing because of the inhumanity of the rules and regulations, Blake stepped forward to let others rank behind Katie, so that Katie solved the urgent need and the two formed a mutual aid group.
As the female neighbor Pavani in the movie "A Man Named Ovie Is Ready to Die" told Ove, "No one can bear everything alone, and when they are loneliest, all they need is the warmest companionship", the difference is that Ove lives in a "cradle-to-grave" Sweden, while Blake lives in a Britain where social assistance benefits are like a guess.
In terms of plot promotion and theme sublimation, the director achieves a shocking purpose through the alternating use of details and climaxes: through Katie's dismantling of sauces at the food relief station because of hunger and disregard for the occasion, laying the groundwork for her future assistance.
And when Blake found out that Katie had helped to hand over the truth, the former's heartbreak and grief and Kai's shame and helplessness formed a strong collision, and the last line "I earned 300 pounds today, I can buy fresh fruit for the children" makes people feel like a fish in the throat;
In the film, every time Blake meets with the security agency evaluators, you can see that he is constantly aging, but the bureaucrats on the other side are still as cold as machines as the first meeting, and Blake says to Katie, "I can't believe it, these people are deciding the life and death of so many people."
Blake finally painted a line of slogans calling for a complaint on the wall of the government security agency! Like "Survive or Perish" in Hamlet? Blake chose to stand "born", and he finally won his own life - dignity.
The Best Director Award at the 69th Cannes Film Festival went to Christian Mongi, the director of The Matrice Examination, for a father who wanted his daughter to "escape" from Romania, and ironically, the destination for "escape" was precisely the United Kingdom.
Jean-Luc Godard, the founder of French New Wave cinema, said that "it is not a political film, but a political vision".
Ken Lodge practiced this sentence through "I Am Black", and in the film's performance method, he abandoned the open-minded, well-defined left-wing criticism of good and evil and adopted the integration of human nature and class, and through philosophical lines, this whiplash for society and system was hidden deeper, and there was more social shock in the subtlety.