Kes - Film Review

This Ken Loach film adapted from the novel A Kestrel for a Knave is brilliant. The film is set in a northern coal-mining town a bleak grubby place to live and the film location enhanced by its bleakness.

Our hero Billy (David Bradley) is a bit of a loner, bullied at home by is much older brother Jud (Freddie Fletcher) and at school. One of my favourite scene in the film is when Billy and a group of other troublemakers pulled out of school assembly and told to wait outside the headmaster’s room. Knowing they were going to be searched they passed off their contraband the likes of cigarettes and matches to a young lad who had been told to take a message to the headmasters office. Despite is protests he is just there to deliver a message the headmaster searches him and is surprise by what he is finding seeing has the others have nothing. Along with Billy and the others, he is caned.

While out early one morning in the local countryside, Billy happens on a kestrel hunting. The farmer whose land he is trespassing on shows him where the Kestrel is nesting. Later he returns and climbs up to the nest and steals one of the chicks.

Billy devotes his time to training his bird who he names Kes with the help of books he had stolen. School is still a battlefield empathise by Billy’s run in with Mr Sugden (Brian Glover) the games teacher. Who after losing a game of football because Billy was the goalkeeper he paid him back for messing around by turning off the hot water and giving him a cold shower. To make sure he stays in there has two of his classmate on guard.

We see Billy and Kes steadily build a relationship as he sets about training the bird he even gives a talk to the class and later his teacher turns up to watch him fly him. When his brother Jud asks young Billy to put a bet on for him his world starts to collapse around him.

Instead of placing the bet, he buys some meat for Kes. Jud marches into the school looking for Billy. The bet won and it was a big win and now he wants Billy’s blood, knowing this Billy finds somewhere to hide until the coast is clear. On returning home he cannot find Kes or Jud so he goes out searching for them in the belief Jud freed his bird. However, unable to find his younger brother he kills the bird leaving Billy besides himself. After burying Kes, he goes back to the farm in hope of finding another bird but the nest is empty.

Even though it was only Loach’s second feature, the signs of a great director were already there in the tender way he handled such a tough story.