A personal selection

Our resident film critic picks the finest films she saw in 2016 – and no, there aren’t any blockbusters in the list.

- Maithili Rao

Picking the best films I saw in 2016 is easy this year. I resisted the lure of the 300-crore-critic-proof blockbusters by cajoling film-viewing companions to limit my visits to the cinema, because of frequent travel. You do become choosy over time, and those ubiquitous promos make you even more cynical. I discovered — unsurprisingly — that the impact of the best films has been more lasting, and I can recall scenes, lines and images with clarity in my uncluttered mind. I would not have missed the latest masterwork from Ken Loach even if it meant standing in long lines at MAMI. I, Daniel Blake is easily not only the best film I saw this year, but also in the last two decades. Loach proves that a simple story about ordinary people, told with affection, insight and layered with multiple meanings, wins every time and everywhere.

Age has not dimmed the 80-year old director’s commitment to the underdog, nor blunted the edge of his sharp observations. Loach belongs to the distinguished group of septuagenarian active filmmakers, working indefatigably in a medium that demands physical energy to match creative vigour. He takes us through the Kafkaesque world of petty bureaucracy, not in a fashionably surreal style but with everyday humour, making each detail tellingly real. The heart of the film ironically revolves round the efforts of Daniel Blake (Dave Johns),a 59-year-old skilled carpenter who has survived a heart attack and makes the rounds of the Newcastle welfare office to claim his disability benefit. A mellow widower with a good word and a smile for both the neighbours (of his council flat) and strangers, he is given the bureaucratic runaround, where every application made to the state is online, one benefit cancels out the other and he has to prove that he has tried to get another job in a depressed labour market (in the accepted official format, not his oral word of honour).