Ken Loach keeps striving for the humanity sometimes lost in modern cinema. His latest film is SORRY WE MISSED YOU, a couer de cinema for couriers in the gig economy.
The casualisation of the workplace brings a casualtyisation to the workplace.
Abby is a mother in a good marriage, she and Ricky are friends, there’s affection between them, they trust each other and they both try to be good parents.
Their problem is trying to care for the kids in the way they’d like to, ditto for Dad. They are both working ridiculous hours in aspiration of a better life but the aspiration is exhausting, physically, mentally and spiritually.
There are two kids. Seb is 16 and neither parent is there to keep an eye on him. He’s going off the rails. He’s got talents, artistic and creative, that they don’t know about. What they do know is that he’s wagging school, and he is getting into trouble. The sparks fly between father and son. Ricky is a bit old school – he just tells Seb what to do and expects him to do it, and of course Seb, too cool for any school, doesn’t.
Then there’s Liza Jane, a very bright kid, the peacemaker in the family who just wants everyone to be happy. She tries to keep the family together when it’s all firing off in different directions.
Ken Loach and his writer Paul Laverty brings real people in real situations and dilemma onto the screen, joking and flaring and scuffling and eventually surviving by an authentic zest for life.
If comedy is tragedy where people don’t give in then SORRY WE MISSED YOU is high comedy indeed, comic and heroic. Despondency is not allowed its victory. Life goes on bravely and self-reliantly with a boisterous appetite for the future.
There is no room to entertain notions of sentimental or squalid as Ricky decides he wants to work as a delivery driver, where it seems that you can make a lot of money. The family is still in rented accommodation, they are not making enough to get out of debt, they’ve been existing hand to mouth for a few years.
The so called gig economy seems wonderful on paper, aspirational in the simplistic Sco Mo slogan of a fair go for those give it a go, but the realities are harsher and in some cases socially harmful.
Is this system sustainable? Do we really want a world in which people are working under such pressure, with the knock-on effects on their friends and their family and the narrowing of their lives? What it seems to sustain and promote is the rise of the working poor brought on by competition that is punitive rather than productive.
Cutting costs and maximising profits may be beneficial to bosses and shareholders but not to the working stiffs and their families. That economic mantra is just mindless rote, as ridiculous as the furphy that economic growth and achieving surplus is of itself paramount.
SORRY WE MISSED YOU is a brilliant and ironic play on words. It’s the message on the card left by courier drivers when the person is not home to accept delivery. It is also what governments and society could say about the increasing wave of working poor, battered by so called market forces and the erosion of worker’s pay and conditions. “Sorry we missed you, you’ve fallen through the cracks.”
SORRY WE MISSED YOU is a vibrant, authentic look at contemporary life that is full of resilience, elevating care above despair, championing the fair.
You’ll be sorry if you miss it.