Kenneth Charles Loach is an English filmmaker. His socially critical directing style and socialist views are evident in his film treatment of social issues such as poverty, homelessness and labour rights. Some of his most well-known films are:
The Wind That Shakes The Barley (2006)
Sorry We Missed You (2019)
I, Daniel Blake (2016)
Kes (1969)
Hidden Agenda (1990)
Source from BFI:
"The Wind That Shakes The Barley (2006) captured attention as it is about the civil war in microcosm. It ranks with the best of them and among the best war films ever made according to Roger Ebert, Chicago-Sun Times, 2007. In Ken Loach's acclaimed war drama, Cillian Murphy and Padriac Delaney play brothers who join the Irish Republican Army in 1920 after witnessing the killing of a friend at the hands of the British Empire who employed to suppress revolution in Ireland."
The Wind That Shakes The Barley made $22 million overall at the global box office so the audience had an overall positive reaction, it was positively rated 90% on Rotten Tomatoes.
I, Daniel Blake is about a 59 year old who survives a heart attack and must fight bureaucratic forces to receive employment and support allowance. It was rated 92% on rotten Tomatoes and had a lot of positive views from top critics so it really reached an audience that would relate to Daniel Blake's situation and have a similar view as him on the government.
Ken Loach's films adopt a socially critical directing style and socialist views. Social issues such as poverty (Poor Cow, 1967), homelessness (Cathy Come Home, 1966) and labour rights (Riff-Raff, 1991, and The Navigators, 2001).
Visually, Loach adopts an unobtrusive style that depicts events in a naturalistic, yet pictorial manner. He never shoots in a studio, choosing instead to produce films on location in order to pick up on local details. Loach frames dialogue scenes from medium height and distance, as if the audience sits directly across from the character. Even his few action sequences (i.e. the battles of 'Land and Freedom' 1995, or the loan shark's death in 'Raining Stones') appear free of Hollywood histrionics. At the same time, while subtle and well-integrated, Loach does not miss an opportunity to relate important thematic details through mise-en-scene. In 'Kes' when Billy reads a comic book on a grassy hill, dwarfed by the mining plant in which his brother works, Loach foreshadows the boy's fate.
Since his films are meant to be inspiring and powerful, they can also be challenging and risk to produce as Loach can't determine what the audience's view o the film and its views will be. For example, when Loach releases a film about poverty, people may disagree with how he represents it or it might infuriate them that he is trying to take an approach to this kind of topic. So it is risky for him to release such strong films with strong messages and meanings.
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