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eZthewashingtonpost.
friday,april3,
2020Movies
late-capitalist system obsessed
with convenience, efficiency and
nanosecond precision couldn’t be
more timely. At a moment when
nearly everyone is relying on e-
commerce to get by — while being
forced to renegotiate the social
contract at its most literal —“Sorry We Missed You” s erves as a
grim reminder that the contract
was rigged from the start.
As t he film opens, Ricky Turner
(Kris Hitchen) is interviewing for
a job with a package delivery
service, touted by the boss (Ross
Brewster) as a self-starter’sSorry We Missed You
Photos by Joss barratt/Zeitgeist FilmsUnrated. available via streaming
at theavalon.org, afisilver.afi.com
and cinemaartstheatre.com.
Contains obscenity. 100 minutes.BY ANN HORNADAYO
ver the course of an enor-
mously productive half-
century career, British
filmmaker Ken Loach has
been one of cinema’s most reli-
able narrators of the human expe-
rience. His 2016 film “I, Daniel
Blake” delivered a devastating
critique of the privatized public
sector, with Loach’s portrait of a
communal safety net disintegrat-
ing before the eyes of the film’s
heart-rending title character.
Loach evinces the same powers
of observation — and his shrewd
eye for spotting unknown talent
— in “Sorry We Missed You,” in
which a working-class family
tries to find autonomy and finan-
cial security amid the predations
of the gig economy. With its de-
piction of razor-thin margins
(commercial and personal), this
absorbing and ultimately shatter-
ing portrayal of the costs of aViewing human costs of the gig economy
dream. Dazzled by promises of
independence and generous daily
payouts, Ricky agrees to buy one
of the company’s white vans, a
gambit that immediately puts
him into debt to his employer.
Thus begins an increasingly
breathless race to perform and,
finally, just to keep up. While
Ricky puts in more and more
hours, his wife (Debbie Honey-
wood) puts in her own hours as a
home health-care worker, keep-
ing track of their children (Rhys
Stone and Katie Proctor) via texts
and voice mails.
Working from a script by fre-
quent collaborator Paul Laverty,
Loach ratchets up the tension
with nerve-racking intensity. Al-
though the film is set in the
dispiriting environs of Newcas-
tle’s most featureless neighbor-
hoods, the filmmaker takes care
to inject his own brand of warmth
and humor: Fans of Loach’s de-
lightful 2009 comedy “Looking
For Eric” will particularly appre-
ciate a hilariously profane argu-
ment between Ricky, a die-hard
Manchester United fan, with one
of his customers.
The putative subject of “Sorry
We Missed You” is the surveil-
lance economy and the currentstate of labor. (“What happened
to the eight-hour day?” a former
union organizer laments at one
point.) But the heart and soul of
the film is Ricky’s family, which
comes dangerously close to fray-
ing beyond repair. With her alert,
spirited performance, Proctor is
the film’s b reakout star, her young
Liza Jane observing the chaos
engulfing her parents with barely
contained distress.
As small catastrophes cascade
into bigger ones, “Sorry We
Missed You” takes on the usual
contours of a Ken Loach film. He’s
too honest to deliver false happy
endings, but he doesn’t s lather on
the melodrama for sentimentali-
ty’s sake. In this unsparing but
deeply compassionate film, view-
ers get a chance to see the fatigue,
stress and bewilderment of mod-
ern life for what they are: not the
regrettable side effects of market-
driven progress, but the results of
cynicism and greed, and the un-
fathomable human cost of want-
ing what we want, right now.
[email protected]I n Ken Loach’s film, a
driver for a package
delivery service
struggles to get byTOP: Kris Hitchen and Katie Proctor in “Sorry We Missed You,” in
which a working-class family tries to find autonomy and financial
security amid the predations of the gig economy. ABOVE: From
left, Hitchen, Proctor, Debbie Honeywood and Rhys Stone.