Author's judgement:
A simple, dramatic, universal story of a family in crisis under the blows of a new economy that is often ferocious, cynical and ruthless. It is the story of a father, a husband who, in order to get by and look for a perspective for his children, accept a "non-job" that is, without a contract, without protection, without guarantees of any kind where he should be "entrepreneur of himself" but in reality he is a modern slave of a wild and unregulated market. This is the story of Sorry, We missed You by Ken Loach who, at over 80 years of age, is still able to offer a film capable of undermining the existential do-gooders, the cartoonish saccharine, the respectability of the "polically correct" of so much contemporary cinema to bring us back with our feet firmly on the ground.
Loach is not only able to know how to use all the tools of cinema in a masterful way, from the screenplay (written by Paul Laverty) to the actors passing through the correct formality of the images, but he is also able to seize the fleeting moment of a suffering humanity in all social, geographical and cultural dimensions and to be able to direct responsibilities well. Telling through images, the pure essence of cinema, is all here. As an English critic has written, it consists in knowing how to insert those details into the film story... the devil's hand... of ordinary everyday life, of absolute normality, capable of making you feel fully "inside" the story.
At that moment the short circuit of cinema is triggered: emotional participation, existential recognition, the human trap. Like when, for example, the protagonist puts a menthol cream under her nostrils in order to better tolerate the nauseating smells she is forced by her job. Speaking of protagonists: the father and husband (with us an unknown Kris Hitchen) is linear and flawless and reminds us once again the great English acting school; the mother (also the unknown Debbie Honeywood) is no less but with an extra note: she is simply masterful, superb, capable of acting like few others, able to put the viewer in difficulty in distinguishing the profession of actress from that of real person.
Her job consists in taking care of elderly and disabled people at home on a piece-rate basis: a hell that questions so much of us, our present and our future, alone at home or relegated to a hospice. The two young sons also deserve attention. But the character who attracts equal attention, not only for professional characteristics, is the ruthless and cowardly Maloni, the employer, who, in order to make a profit, would sell his father and mother cheaply at the flea market.
It is the quintessence of social cynicism, the plastic, iconic representation, of our era marked by the "speed of delivery" of everything and immediately at the door of the house, who cares if you are sick and if you lose the damned scanner device also because it has been robbed and you deserve a fine even if you are not to blame. And then, the elderly, that is, those who we will all become sooner or later, in their gray and total solitude, abandoned to more or less diligent and conscientious carers. Finally, young people, forced to change cities at the age of 15 because "there is more work there" and who hold "their whole life in their mobile phones: images, people, memories ...".
It is a story that has neither a beginning nor an end. It ends exactly where it opened, with the faint hope that “it could be better”. It's not up to the cinema, it's not the directors' job, to solve the world's problems: they can only lend a hand to recognize them, to understand them and it's not a trivial matter.
With this film, Ken Loach delivers cinematic kicks that leave their mark: you may like it or not but you can't help but recognize that he is among the few directors in Europe who know how to intuit and synthesize on the big screen what otherwise, for many, is difficult to comprehend. It's a good start to the year to go to the cinema to see such a work.
