Stevecorp
Don't listen to the negative reviews
Voxitype
Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.
Keeley Coleman
The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;
erago-1
when I watch this film it's sit on my chest and never go. It is true classic. Football scene, the teacher beating students in classroom scene was unique. it is in three best films that I've ever seen. 1. fiddler on the roof, 2. kes, 3. Ah güzel istanbul. and I have to say again Ken Loach is Dickens in cinema.
lasttimeisaw
Billy Casper (Bradley) is a schoolboy, around 14 or so, his visage looks awfully older than his real age and his scrawny skeleton makes him smaller among his schoolmates, he lived in a coal mine town of England, his father is absent, his mother (Perrie) is negligent and his worst nightmare is his bigger brother, Jud (Fletcher) who cannot leave him in peace even in sleep because they have to squeeze in the same bed. Billy has to moonlight as a paperboy every morning to supplement household expenses before going to the Protestant school, where he constantly succumbs to the receiving end of the browbeating from his peers, or a tyrannic football coach (Glover), or a diatribe from the pontifical headmaster (Bowes) and his cane, even so, school is better than working in the dangerous pit where Jud currently works. Subconsciously Billy is rebellious to the adulthood whereas there is no hope in his bleak future (hard-hitting political philosophy is Ken Loach's unwavering trademark which can already be pungently detected in his second feature-length). Nevertheless, Billy has developed a keen eye on falconry, he has no qualm to snitch a book about it in a secondhand bookstore, and finally steals a fledgling kestrel from its nest, which he names Kes and it becomes one glimmer light in Billy's otherwise dismal life, he trains Kes every day in a green field, from baby steps with jesses until it can soar unbridledly, composer John Cameron renders the melodious oboe to personify Kes' presence, and a sublime coexistence occurs, later, as Billy's benevolent teacher Mr. Farthing (Welland) sagely points out, there is a serene power of silence created by Kes, whenever it flaps, hovers, glides and swoops. To Billy, Kes is never a pet, it cannot be tamed, instead, he is a caretaker, to feed and train it regularly, to appreciate the time when he can observe this sacred creature within close-range. A mutual equilibrium which lays bare the ultimate harmony between human and nature, unfortunately it is doomed to be broken, Loach never condescends to emotionally manipulative his audiences to elicit pathos, instead he brandishes his camera like a stern bystander, shows us the brutal reality as it happens. David Bradley is wondrous to behold, for all his falconry competence, the utterly effortless line-delivery out of his apparent low-class grubbiness and his emotional crunch near the end is drastically affecting, a BAFTA win for BEST NEW COMER is fairly-honored. Colin Welland, who also won a BAFTA for BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR, is the saving grace of all the human characters around Billy's life, he and Bradley fabricate the most touching moments in this rather bleak tale, and he would later win an Oscar as a screenwriter for CHARIOTS OF FIRE (1981). Lynne Perrie as Billy mother, doesn't have too much screen time, but she defiantly defies the usual cliché of a single mother who doesn't love her offspring, in this case, she is just incompetent to assume the job as a mother, she doesn't understand Billy and has too much grouch to the dire situation and a good-for-nothing Jud, even among all the domestic disturbance near the end, we can accuse her not love Billy, such a sheer insight of the dreadful reality of parenthood. The film is adapted from Barry Hines' novel A KESTREL FOR A KNAVE, which is intrinsically in agreement with Ken Loach's working-class inclination, KES is indisputably among the best crops of UK productions dedicated to the ordinary hoi polloi, a timeless classic about a boy and his kestrel, the entrancing oneness between man and nature, and a soulful cautionary tale of a time should not been forgotten, or maybe it is still present elsewhere in this imperfect world .
tieman64
"If black boxes survive air crashes, why don't they make the whole plane out of that stuff?" - George Carlin Ken Loach's "Kes", now regarded as one of the last classics of the British New Wave, tells the tale of Billy Caspter, a 13 year old kid living in the working class town of Barnsley.Billy, bullied by his mother, older brother, teachers and schoolmates, mopes about Loach's film with a look of perpetual gloom. Haggard and forlorn, Billy sees no hope in his present or future life. Society itself seems to have dismissed him as a "hopeless case", destined to work at local coal mines.Despite the world kicking him down, and despite living in a town which gives him no avenues to creatively channel his energies, Billy manages to develop a passion for birds. As such, he captures and tames a wild kestrel and teaches it to obey his commands. One of the film's best moments involves Billy, a tiny, fragile looking kid, being forced to stand up in front of his school classroom and relate something interesting about his life. Nervously he tells his teacher and schoolmates about his bird. They look at him with wonder and amazement. How can this little kid be smart, patient and dedicated enough to tame a wild animal?And that, admittedly quite naively, is the theme of the film: society doesn't give the poor and the down-trodden the chance to surprise the world and make something of themselves, Loach's kestrel, and its eventual death, symbolising a kind of social predestination in which the individual's wings are clipped before he's given the chance to fly. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy: the impoverished and the marginalized are treated in such a way as to become as they are viewed.Loach was known for these types of social realist films, tackling issues like abortion in "Up The Junction" (1965) and homelessness in "Cathy Come Home" (1966). Like most British film-makers of the time (Lindsay Anderson, Tony Richardson, John Schlesinger etc), the intention here is to angrily point fingers, give a voice to the working-class and demonize social ills until things change. Whilst Loach's contemporaries would lose this idealism, he's held his ground for over half a century.8.5/10 - A simple tale which seems to resonate across all cultures, every country in the world having an internationally well-loved film like this in their local canon. Consider, for example, France's "The 400 Blows", India's "Pather Panchali" and Iran's "Where is the friend's home?"
sshepherd10
This film is from the book "Kes - A Kestrel for A Knave" by Barry Hines.Do you remember any of the books you had to read at school as "compulsory reading"? To me this film should be compulsory viewing for all English schoolkids. This is how it was. I love the football scenes. As you may know Brian Glover was a professional wrestler, but his portrayal of the gym teacher is stunning. My gym teacher was Bev Risman, who was fullback/goalkicker for Leeds RLFC, and they could have taken Glover's role from him..Although a dark, grim film, this brings back many childhood memories for me.. including being caned for smoking.. a Players No. 6 I had stolen from my dad..They just don't make films like this anymore.. Billy Elliot and Brassed Off get close.. but Kes is my favourite film of all time..Stewart (The Yorkshireman, and proud of it) Shepherd
