Ken Loach directs his finest working-class drama.
Sorry We Missed You
I usually like to open with a lyrical line from the film I’m reviewing, but no such phrasing jumps out in Ken Loach’s Sorry We Missed You. It’s neorealism for today, cinema verité for film, and gut-wrenching verisimilitude for Brits, not beautiful words. It’s about as real a depiction of proletariat struggles as you will see any year.
Sorry We Missed You is an uncompromising story about well-meaning folks, kitchen-sink drama about contemporary working-class Brits in Newcastle upon Tyne in Northeast England. Working is a challenge for the family: Rick (Kris Hitchen) and Abby (Debbie Honeywood) love their family, 11-year-old Liza Jane (Katie Proctor) and her brother, Seb (Rhys Stone); it’s just that work gets in the way.
The challenge is making enough to sustain a normal life while Rick’s driving for a tyrannical delivery business (think Amazon) is unforgiving about family emergencies, and Abby’s home-care job demands her working in excrement for endless hours mostly at a fixed price. Yet, they remain optimistic for a while about their future until life happens.
The cruelty of fate coupled with the growing inequality of the classes, always an issue in Brit films, emphasizes uncertain life. In ways, Loach’s approach mirrors director Mike Leigh’s (Secrets and Lies), both interested in how the working class survives.
Rick’s recalcitrant son, Seb, and tender-hearted pre-teen, Liza, bring heartache and in Seb’s case, the law. Compounding the sorrow over Seb’s rebelliousness is the inability of Mum and Dad to pull from their jobs to attend to the law and Jeb’s teen needs.
Loach moves quietly through their lives as accidents and attitudes move the family to crises over which they have little control. Although this drama is not heavy with philosophical musings, the actors compel the audience to sympathy: “There but for the grace of God go I.”
While hard times make the family tense and rough, the actors believably make the audience experience the hardships until little hope survives. Loach effortlessly captures the vicissitudes the working class suffer no matter which part of the world they occupy.
Sorry We Missed You
Director: Ken Loach (I, Daniel Blake)
Screenplay: Paul Laverty (The Wind that Shakes the Barley)
Cast: Kris Hitchen (The Barking Murders), Debbie Honeywood
Run Time: 1h 41m
Rating: NR
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JohnDeSando62@gmail.com
