Saturday, June 28, 2025

Kes

Kes; drama, UK 1969; D: Ken Loach, S: David Bradley, Freddie Fletcher, Lynne Perrie, Colin Welland, Robert Naylor, Brian Glover

Barnsley. Billy Casper (14) lives with his older bully brother Jud and divorced mother in a small house. Jud works in the local coal mine, but Billy doesn't want to follow his footsteps. Bullied in school by other students and uninterested in class, Billy one days climbs up to a nest and steals a little falcon, naming it Kes. Billy feeds Kes in his shed with mice, dead birds and raw meat. When he tells about his falcon in front of the entire school class, his English language teacher Mr. Farthing praises him and even goes to see the bird himself. When Billy spends Jud's money not on a horse race but on fish and chips, and Jud's preferred horse wins, Jud is so angry that he kills Kes. Billy finds the bird in a trash can and burries it in the open.

"Kes" is a Walt Disney film subverted into a depressive social tragedy. There are many movies about a lonely, neglected kid who bonds with an animal as a therapy and escape from the cruel world—a whale in "Free Willy"; a dog in "Lassie"; a horse in "Black Beauty"—or even a fantasy companion—such as "E.T." or "How to Train Your Dragon"—but few had such bitter, sombering aesthetics and naturalism as Ken Loach's approach in "Kes", about a friendship between a kid and a falcon. There is no sugar-coating that pretends nothing too bad cannot happen in life. It is grim, 'raw' and desolate in its gruelling honesty. Loach strives towards showing life as dirty as it is, in this case a kind child, Billy (excellent David Bradley), a hostage of a brute society: Billy is bullied in school not only by students, but also by his physical education teacher (Brian Glover) who throws a football at the boy, causing him to fall in the mud, and later punishes him for not dedicating himself to the football match by throwing Billy into the shower while he turns off the warm water, forcing the naked Billy to climb out of the window as to not freeze any further. 

At the same time, Billy himself isn't idealized—in the opening act, he works by delivering newspapers, and has this exchange with his boss: "I haven't taken nothing of yours yet, have I?" - "I haven't given you a chance, that's why." - "You don't have to. I haven't been nicking for ages now." Billy is also seen in unsympathetic light when using a shotgun to shoot a small bird on a branch to feed his falcon Kes. Despite these highly naturalistic approaches, the movie does "slip" towards a few brief satirical moments, such as the one where the camera shows a comic-book panel Billy is reading or the fantasy football match of the PE teacher with subtitles showing "Manchester United 1 - Spurs 2". The choice of a falcon as Billy's best friend is a strange one. A dog or a cat would have been a much more natural choice than a falcon that just mutely stares at Billy and never shows any affection towards him, aiming only for his food. It would have also made more sense if Billy had found the falcon abandoned, instead of abducting it from the nest. Their interactions are slightly too sparse, while the sequences of Billy in school are too superfluous. But the main theme still rings as strong as ever: the need for self-actualization. As strange as it is, the falcon becomes a symbol for Billy's discovery of some abstract happiness, meaning and a sense of purpose in his empty life. Few people can understand it, but it has an effect on him that is profound. The emotionally devastating ending thus hits you like a brick in the head—this denial of personal happiness, attack on innocence and insisting on cruelty is one of the strongest condemnations of human primitivism, inconsideration and malice caught on cinema. In spite of that, the final scene is flawed, since it feels strangely abrupt and incomplete, as if some conclusion is missing. 

Grade:+++

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