User reviews

The beauty of this film lies in the simplicity and purity of its message. If you want to get along, especially in a Northern English mining town in the 60's, do not ever hope for anything better. If you do, the world's gonna come and kick you in the teeth. Discuss.

Billy Casper has an empty life. In trouble with the police for theft, he shares a bed with his brother (a discontent miner willing to take out his frustrations on just about anyone nearby), goes to a school with some dispiriting and brutally repressive teachers, and has nothing to look forward to but the day when he to descends into Hades to work the coalface.

Until Kes comes along. Kes is a kestrel that Billy rears and trains. Kes soars where Billy can only dream. Kes is hope.

Ken Loach is the master of social commentary and I think this is probably his best film. This film embodies what it means to be working class in all the best traditional ways. You work, you do not have ambition, you are surrounded by people who have accepted their lot in life, you cannot hope for better, you won't be allowed to hope for better. If that sounds brutal, it is and so is this film. You aren't told right and wrong, you are told what is. It is thrust in your face for you to deal with.

The best thing about this film are all the characters that surround Billy. All have had all spirit hammered out of them at an early age and are damned if any one else is going to have any. The teachers casual and resigned brutality living what remains of their dreams by playing against the boys on the football field and imagining they are Bobby Charlton (and still losing) is perfectly displayed. The shop keeper's humouring of childish enthusiasm because he knows it ain't going to last. And most of all Billy's brother's spiteful depression. His spirit has been freshly crushed and it still rankles.

And amidst this gloom shines Billy and Kes. They soar above this nightmare like Andy Dufrense soars when he plays opera to the Shawshank inmates. Ken is telling us hope is a jewel to be treasured especially when it is surrounded by those wishing it crushed and buried.

You must see this film, especially if you've seen the Shawshank Redemption. Be warned though, there is no redemption here. Don't be afraid of the accents you non-Yorkshire folk. Just think of it as Wallace and Gromit without the cheese.

Kes is the story of a few weeks in the life of a schoolboy, Billy Casper, against the backdrop of social disintegration that was the north of England in the late 1960s. Billy finds and trains a kestrel, investing in it all the latent energy that his school and rough home life have suppressed, and finding in it a release from the all too present reality of the rest of his existence.

An outstanding performance from David Bradley as Billy glues together the sometimes shaky portrayals of the other characters. As a contemporary social commentary this is a film that has many of the elements you might expect. Billy has an impoverished family with an elder brother working down the pit and a single mother struggling to cope with the situation in which she finds herself. His school is staffed by teachers who react to their part in a failing system with aggression towards the pupils. And he's quite at home with petty crime, stealing a pint from the milkman and a volume to help him train the kestrel from the second hand bookshop. But the film is saved from cliché by the honesty of the acting and the quality of the direction; it seems at times as if we're watching a fly on the wall documentary. The reactions of the boys to the rant and the caning they receive for being caught smoking is entirely natural. Brian Glover as the sadistic games master is all too credible. And the employment interview is too close to my own experience to be fiction.

The film moves to its inevitable and unforgettable conclusion and we're left wondering what happened to Billy Casper after the filming finished.

From the start,the hero's future is at a complete standstill.His familiar background -an indifferent mother and a brute of a brother-leaves him no hope .His school seems an alien world,of which he cannot take advantage,where the adults are hostile.The gymnastics teacher is a failed football player,and now,with his students,he's still dreaming he's coaching his football team for glory.And because he 's getting old and embittered,he uses a scapegoat when things go wrong:and of course,he always chooses our unfortunate hero.The shower scene enhances ,so to speak,the psychological and pedagogical "aptitudes" of this dumb-and a bit sadistic-man.

So,the young boy needs someone to love,and because he cannot find one,he tames an hawk.This hawk epitomizes freedom,escape from this petty microcosm.In direct contrast to the gym teacher,appears the English teacher.He wants the young boy to give a presentation on his hawk.And,in front of a spellbound class,the dog has his day.Thanks to this clever man,the boy acquires self-confidence and maybe his studies will take a new turn.

But Kenneth Loach's characters rarely escape from their fate.Because of his brother's cruelty,all hopes will be blighted,and the boy's future will probably that of the two lads in "looks and smiles". Kenneth Loach or the wrong side of England.

Ken Loach's (1969) film of Barry Hines' novel 'A Kestrel for a Knave' is written with Tony Garnett (Producer of 'Cathy Come Home' for BBC TV). Set in a mining community in the north of England it tells the story of young schoolboy Billy Casper (Dai Bradley) and his unexpected attachment to a Kestrel.

We join Billy in a fatherless family where Mum (Lynne Perrie) is struggling to keep things together and retain some semblance of control over Billy's fiery elder brother Jud (Freddie Fletcher).

Suddenly we see the well-established northern working class preoccupation with keeping pigeons elevated to an altogether higher plane as Billy begins to rear a kestrel chick. We follow him as he takes on the most challenging project of his life to date and becomes totally engrossed in learning everything he can about this wonderful bird; soon well on his way to becoming expert in the ancient art of falconry.

At school, Billy finds support from English teacher Mr Farthing (Colin Welland) who is not slow to recognise the impact this bird has had upon Billy's otherwise fractured and impoverished home life.

As Billy's imagination soars with his developing rapport with the bird, we share his keen enthusiasm and rich understanding of the nature of this sharp and noble predator.

But in doing so, we pay the price when Billy's troubled home life intervenes and robs him of what has become the powerful symbol of his ability to transcend the limitations of the tough and unforgiving community of which he is inexorably a part.

This is a great film that captures the unique ability of young people to find meaning and fulfilment in the darkest and most unpromising situations.

Although Kes was not Loach's first film (he had made "Cathy come home" for television and "Poor Cow") it is probably his best both artistically and historically. Historically, the film is an important one, because it's the first one that gives an accurate description of a working-class environment. There had been several social realist movies made before it, such as Karel Reisz's "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" or Tony Richardson's "Billy Liar", but Kes set a whole new agenda. Esthetically, Loach went a lot further than those before him, filming his characters in a quasi-documentary way. Also, the actors were, for a great part, non-professionals, which lent a further "realistic" touch to the film. For the first time, strong regional accents (Yorkshire) were allowed to flow freely. Finally, the story itself is extremely compelling. Without being at all demonstrative or heavy, the film is the most powerful indictment of the british class system that has ever been recorded on film.

Billy Casper, the hero, is shown to have absolutely no chance of escaping his harsh milieu. At home, his half-brother bullies him and he finds no comfort from his mother. At school the behaviour of teachers, career-councillors and headmasters ranges from violent to merely condescending. It's this anti-institutional side to the film that makes it so powerful. Billy basically knows that he'll probably end up down the mine and he knows that school isn't there for his pleasure or his fulfillment but to tell him what to do. So, unable to express himself at home or at school, Billy develops a passion for hawks and devotes great time and effort to the taming of a kestrel. This passion comes to symbolise both the boy's hopes and his identity.

It was a time when life was smothered by coal dust, when decades of decay had left just rust, in a forgotten northern town, there's no way up, directions down, any hope of getting out, completely crushed. But a passion seems to fall out of the sky, as a bird of prey is caught by your young eye, provides distraction from mundane, from those who treat you with disdain, spreading wings that help you sail up high and fly. Alas your joy and happiness is only fleeting, as there are those who'd rather give you a good beating, take away that piece of hope, to leave you on a greasy slope, but there's no point in calling out, wailing or bleating.

A good insight into growing up in an underprivileged environment. Difficulties of school and home life. Well written and acted. Low production value. The football scene is absolutely brilliant.

This is a small, perfectly formed jewel of a film. Growing up in a similar small town, at the same time, in the north of England, I can vouch for its authenticity. The scenes and dialogue are very true to life: the paper round, morning assembly, the ordeal in the headmaster's office. The scrap in the playground, the fags behind the gym. Certainly I knew plenty of young lads like Billy Casper, though probably the circumstances weren't quite as grim as depicted - nobody I knew had to share a bed with an ogre of an older brother. The film is beautifully shot, with wonderful use of natural lighting, and very effective marrying of images to music. There are some great performances too: Brian Glover and Colin Welland have rightly passed into legend for their depiction of two very different teachers. Of course David Bradley is unforgettable, and dominates the story. The film has seeped into the consciousness of the group of friends I grew up with, and resonates still. Don't be put off by the subject matter; there are plenty of funny moments and overall the effect is to uplift the spirit.

Kes is a movie directed by Ken Loach, one of the few directors that has an eye for telling moving stories about working class people in the North of England (I,daniel blake, Raining Stones, and others). The plot is really simple, and maybe that is why this picture is so moving. A young boy who lives in Barnsley with his mother and older brother, without many prospects of getting out of the life he was born in, befriends a falcon, spends time with her while his school mates are smoking and getting into trouble, and together they form a pretty nice bond. It is really simple, and the animal is a symbol of the freedom that hardworking english people crave so much and deserve.

If you are not english or have an interest in the country, it may be a difficult watch, and the very heavy Barnsley accent will surely put some people off, but it is a must watch and worth sitting through it, even in the moments where it does get slow. David Bradley's performance is stellar, and he and Kes steal all the show.

Ken Loach's kitchen sink slice-of-life drama focuses on a young Barnsley boy as he trains a falcon while preparing to leave school and enter working life. 'Kes (1969)' is a proper Yorkshire movie, its characters' thick and honest accents occasionally requiring a quick rewind, and it's this actually provides a lot of its charm, especially as someone who grew up in the area. It's a grounded, level-headed experience that still manages to be entertaining. The social commentary at its core is almost (though not quite) subtextual, which allows for the film to be taken on a surface level and enjoyed for what it is (that isn't a bad thing, by the way). Still, it's not as if the picture isn't resonant. It's both funny and heartbreaking, evoking a nostalgia for a time and place that most modern audiences won't have lived in. It resonates rather deeply because its core story is almost universal. Ultimately, it's an enjoyable, realistic and unique (thanks mainly to its underrepresented setting) tale of childhood. 7/10

Most film-makers who deal with a story featuring a boy/girl and his/her pet go for the heartstrings by underlining both the kid's and the animal's cuteness. The narrative structure holding this picturesque idyll together mainly consists of predictable melodramatic incidents that endanger this relationship.

One of Loach's best pics undermines this soapy approach by intensifying the unaffectedly portrayed boy-pet relationship through the unflinchingly bleak description of the boy's surroundings. Kes is not just a beloved falcon, he represents a way to endure social hardships.

This earnest, heartfelt drama is a true gem of British working-class cinema.

8 out of 10 funny football matches

If you are not from the north of England you may have difficulty with the dialogue in this film but dont let it put you off this is a masterpiece.The story of a teenage boy with no friends and no hope set in the mining heartland of yorkshire in the sixties is absolutely authentic. He finds salvation from the grim reality of his existence when he rears and trains a young kestrel, which is the only thing in his young life that has any meaning.David Bradley who plays Billy Casper in the leading role is superb.There are many scenes from the film that are absolute gems, but here are a few that warrant a special mention.Brian Glover playing the role of billys physical education teacher is out of this world, why he was never nominated as best supporting actor for an oscar i will never know.Colin Welland (later to become an oscar winner himself for screenplay of chariots of fire) was also brilliant as billys form teacher.The film reaches out to you on many levels. In me it stirred horror, anger, humour and tears.I am quite sure it will also do the same to anyone who views this timeless masterpiece.

One of the defining films of my life. Very few films have come so close to accurately portraying Northern, English, Working Class life. Anyone from outside of this kind of community may find it grim and not appreciate the all the references. As someone who grew up at the same time and in a similar environment as the film then all I can see is the wit, spirit and sensitivity displayed in the face of individual and institutionalised brutality.

David Bradley as Billy is superb and even more amazing is the fact he did nothing before or since this film. All of the incidental characters are played by local residents - unfortunately this is sometimes clearly obvious. The football match however is, in my opinion, a classic cinematic moment.

The film has become even more poignant since many similar communities have since been devastated by the Thatcherite induced collapse of Britain's industrial base.

All in all a exceeding moving, funny, honest and captivating account of a young boy's life in a sometimes hostile, sometimes beautiful environment.

SPOILER We hear a lot about the great French New Wave of the late '50's and '60's but what must not be forgotten is that in Britain at approximately the same time we were experiencing a New Wave that for us was no less exciting, even if, in retrospect, the directors that led it, Lindsay Anderson, Tony Richardson and Karel Reisz did not quite possess the iconic genius of giants such as Francois Truffaut, Claude Chabrol and Jean-Luc Godard. Nevertheless under the collective umbrella of a company named Woodfall they produced some pretty exciting stuff. I remember thinking Richardson's "A Taste of Honey" one of the most life-affirming films I had ever seen. If time has been a little less kind to it as one became more and more aware of its dependence on the use of melancholy industrial landscapes to underline its excitement, one film that understated this element, Anderson's "This Sporting Life" (not actually a Woodfall film but very much a part of this movement) has not diminished its power and remains in my opinion as seminal a work as Godard's "A Bout de Soufflé". Towards the end of the Woodfall era a new figure, Ken Loach emerged on the scene with early works such as "Kes", that were to carry forward the spirit of the British New Wave from the late '60's to the present day, a body of work without parallel in its consistency in our native cinema. "Kes", the story of an unloved streetwise adolescent, Billy Casper, living in Barnsley breaks dramatically away from the cinematic tradition of cute kids in much the same way as Truffaut had done in "Les Quatre Cent Coups". Billy, grubby and not beyond the odd bout of petty pilfering, lives in a council estate with a single mum and a loutish elder brother. School is a drudge to somehow get through each day. It's a place peopled by largely unsympathetic teachers who keep the kids down by barrages of verbal abuse and the odd swish of the cane. Somehow Billy holds his own. In the meantime he finds his inner strength and salvation in training a kestrel from the wild. When in the closing scened he loses the bird through the uncaring machinations of his brother, the effect is nothing short of heart wrenching. I would not quite go along with those reviewers who consider this to be Loach's finest film. It is somehow too loosely focused and concentrates a little too much on peripheral social issues such as the parlous state of education in a Northern secondary school and unsympathetic career guidance. The football match in the middle, although gently funny, goes on for rather a long time, deflecting our interest away from Billy. Loach was later to develop his vision of the human condition more single-mindedly and to greater effect in works such as "The Gamekeeper", "Ladybird, Ladybird" and what I believe to be his greatest work, "My Name is Joe", which is not to diminish a film with many wonderful moments provided mainly by David Bradley in his unforgettable performance as Billy Casper.

I was a receptionist at The Queens Hotel in Barnsley where the film crew were housed during the making of this film. Subsequently, I grew to know the film makers and most of the cast quite well. David Bradley was a remarkable young man (if you're out there David, I still have the school photo you gave to me) and an incredible young actor, even though he had never been in front of a camera before, I'll never forget him. I was also an extra in the pub scene, which was a terrific experience. The film was and still remains an accurate, revealing look into the lives of many people during that period, and I'm thrilled to have been a part of it. It ranks as one of the best films of that era in my opinion and I'm so happy that it has earned a deserved place on the list of best British films - congratulations to everyone who was involved!

One under-loved and undernourished young boy in the North of England finds hope through a young kestrel that comes in to his care. But how long will his happiness last?

The problem with this product is that it is what I call a pushed-down-your-throat Secondary Modern School classic: it was compulsory reading as part of the second tier English education system. Others of this cannon included A Taste of Honey and A Kind of Loving.

(Note: The English education system has been shaken up since both my education and the education on display here.)

After the film took off they even changed the title of the book to the film (it was originally called A Kestrel for a Nave) and put Bradley's picture of the front - giving an offensive V sign as I recall!

There is so much that the outsider won't quite catch - not least of which is the Yorkshire accent and slang. I hear that they put up captions on the DVD - so well done to them. I am sure there are a few people, even here in England, that have taken advantage of the service!

The acting of lead Bradley in his first ever production is quite frightening. He shows a natural aptitude to working before a camera. After this he appeared in a few TV series and then disappeared - I believe he wasn't that keen on the biz, although he still pops-up now and then.

The relationship with the bird is touching and sweet: and for a few moments Billy Casper (our anti-hero) has something to live for. Maybe it suggests that there is more to him than meets the eye - that he could have a future in farming or other hands-on countryside industries. However in the classroom he is a disaster.

(The fear of going "down'pit" is now well and truly over for the Billy Casper's of this world - every coal mine in the district is now closed! )

This is the film that most influenced Billy Elliot - so if you are looking for more of the same - this is your man. For me it is a time warp - but since I didn't really enjoy Secondary Education it is not a time warp I want to experience very often!

My favourite film of all time. Admittedly I haven't seen this film ( movie ) for years. A stark portrayal of late sixties/ early seventies northern Britain at a time of ( still ) post war miserablism and not unlike my own school experience. Receiving " the belt " as punishment for little reason other than the teacher's inability to control a class or just their own boredom. Classic football ( soccer ) scene with the wonderful Brian Glover. Sigh. Did Ken Loach make a better film in the rest of his career? " My Name is Joe " was a great movie of desperation in the poverty stricken,drug addled, hinterland of 90's/2000's Scotland. Desperately sad, desperately funny. Kes,however has my vote as it was one of my earliest moving film experiences.

No spoilers ......for a lot of us our early years were hell. In the home and at school. Having read the book and seen the film as part of our English lessons I identified so much with "Casper"? , life was bleak. His only break from the relentless slog of his formative years and his future life "darn pit" ( if I recall ) was his training of a kestrel. Life is bleak .......this won't end well. Best scene as to be the football match Brian Glover steals the show.