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Sorry We Missed You Director: Ken Loach Talent: K
ris Hitchen, Debbie Honeywood, Rhys Stone, Katie Proctor Release: 1 November Down Claiborne Director: Moira Tierney Release: 7 November (IFI, 6.30pm) Ricky has just got a job as delivery driver. We first meet him as he’s being told the ground rules by his brutish manager Maloney, who informs Ricky he will be employed on a faux-freelance basis, and “won’t really be working” for them. Their time targets are so punishing that Ricky has to piss in a bottle. Meanwhile, his similarly beleaguered wife Abbie works as a contract nurse and a home carer. Ken Loach and screenwriter, Paul Laverty, have bested their powerful Palme D’or winning I, Daniel Blake. This film is more alive to human possibility. The tone is so naturalistic that you often forget you’re watching a movie – I love how Loach includes moments when actors trip over their lines. But it’s occasional moments of levity that really keep us invested – Ricky sparring with customers over football rivalries; his son pretending his graffiti is part of youth outreach programme. The glimmers of hope make the cruel twists of fate all the more devastating. Social realism so often tries to feed us our vegetables in a dour, off-putting way; thankfully, a more multi-faceted picture is presented here than in I, Daniel Blake. Some critics have accused this too of being didactic. Sure, the weight of the world falls on the characters, but in order to be sufficiently decrying of zero-hour contracts, it’s important to see just how bad things can get. And crucially, while the work conditions are abysmal and inhumane, it’s issues within the family that truly make things take a disastrous turn. Such zero-hour arrangements make no allowance for human frailty: you lose money if you’re sick or have a family crisis. One or two plot contrivances seemed to be a means to increase pressure on this family, but this is nitpicking, as nothing can dim the power and fury of Loach’s polemic. RK In Down Claiborne, Irish film artist Moira Tierney explores the historical and political underpinnings of the artistic traditions of Mardi Gras Indians in Tremé, New Orleans. Filming on super 8mm and 16mm, her examinations sit firmly within the realm of experimental. In 2012 and 2013 Tierney did some filming with the Mardi Gras Indians and later returned to film a mural painted by a local barber, which analyses Hurricane Katrina and makes historical connections with slavery. She also shoots underneath a controversial highway where the locals have, in a way, reclaimed their territory by covering the highway pillars with scenes from local history (relating to slavery and the Civil Rights movement) and culture (the Mardi Gras Indians and iconic local musicians). “I wanted the soundtrack to add layers of information to the image, without providing an authoritative ‘explanation.’ It was necessary to fill in the gaps in the official histories and I had the idea of the exchange of information via less linear circuitry,” says Tierney. Thus, Down Claiborne has a somewhat meditative feel to it, often times filled more with silence than pronouncements, more in tune to the output of D.A. Pennebaker than David Simon. There’s a timeless, tranquil, beauty to the wash of imagery and its understated overlap with a narrative which allows you to imbue thoughts and questions into the moving images. When Tierney embraces sound, it comes in the form of spoken word, contemporary jazz, Mardi Gras songs, and a voiceover by Big Chief Kevin Goodman. Down Claiborne is a free-styling, arthouse, collage of a community still under the cosh of its troubled history – a place mis-shaped by joyous creation and chaos. MMD 77