Review: ‘Kes,’ Beautifully Painful and Sad, Remains Ken Loach’s Masterpiece 50 Years Later 


Bleakly beautiful and painfully sad, “Kes” remains Ken Loach’s masterpiece. For over 50 years, he has made films about the working class; yet few have married his socialist ideals with evocative character study so seamlessly. 

The loose story follows no-hoper Billy Casper (David Bradley), a scrappy latchkey kid kicking around the Yorkshire mining town of Barnsley in the few weeks before he leaves school. His prospects are grim. Billy comes from a dysfunctional single-parent family; they live on a council estate where he still shares a bed with his mean older brother Jud (Freddie Fletcher). He’s adrift at the estate’s secondary school; here pupils suffer barking authority and humdrum teaching before getting churned out into menial or low-income jobs. 

It seems that Billy’s future lies down the coal mine next to Jud, working at a coalface hundreds of meters beneath the ground five days a week. Jud has resigned himself to this hard life; his only respite to come from a skinful of ale and chatting up local women down the working man’s club on a Saturday night. Billy’s flinty mother (Lynne Perrie) also enjoys these nights out; she has found herself a new fancy man after her “wrong ‘un” husband left them a while back.

Billy’s grim existence finds an unlikely ray of hope in the form of Kes, a fledgeling kestrel that he steals from its nest high up on a ruined wall in the surrounding countryside. Struck by the bird’s beauty and freedom, he also steals a book and starts teaching himself the art of falconry.

Training the bird gives Billy a point of focus, as well as a welcome break from his dour day-to-day life. Transformed from the slouching, fidgety, surly kid we see in the other scenes, the kestrel gives him a sense of purpose and pride. The training scenes reveal that someone as alienated as Billy has potential, or even a calling, buried somewhere deep within. Eventually, however, harsh reality comes crashing back in for the film’s painful denouement.

Adapted from “A Kestrel for a Knave,” the semi-autobiographical novel from local boy Barry Hines. Loach shot “Kes” in and around Barnsley using first-time actors and non-professional extras from the town. Their raw performances—sometimes visibly conscious of the camera—give the film a sense of authenticity and vitality, speaking in a dense Yorkshire vernacular that even Brits from other regions might find difficult.

14-year-old David Bradley, also a local lad, plays Billy Casper, and his performance is phenomenal. Billy is the quintessential Loach protagonist. He is crushed by poverty, neglect, and circumstance, but is not about to take it lying down—and Bradley captures Billy’s irrepressibly defiant instincts. He might take a beating for his troubles, but he’s ready to stick up for himself against anyone. His moment of glory comes when he breathlessly relates training the kestrel to his classmates. Bradley’s awkward sincerity in that scene is heartbreaking and inspiring in its truthfulness.

As with other Loach works, it is sometimes possible to detect a subtle switch in the actor’s performances when they become a mouthpiece for a point that the director wants to get across. It is noticeable during the working man’s club scene that Lynn Perrie suddenly seems to be reciting lines about how her sons might have had a brighter future if raised in a more positive environment with better education.

That is just a minor quibble. “Kes” is primarily a poignant character study of a working-class boy who finds a liberating moment of freedom and expression. It’s also a powerful critique of the British education system at the time and an indictment of capitalism. Ken Loach has never been shy of expounding his socialist ideals, and here he gives us a teen betrayed by the system. Kids who fail their 11-plus exams then enter lower-grade schooling. Here they simply provide cheap labour for the country, serving the higher classes from a deeply disadvantaged and deprived position.

Viewing “Kes” over half a century since its release, it isn’t hard to draw parallels with modern Loach films. For what it takes out of the employee, there isn’t much difference between the coal mine and the punishing gig economy in “Sorry We Missed You.” Similarly, the educational system in “Kes,” designed to keep boots firmly pressed on young working-class necks, isn’t too far away from the Kafka-esque benefits system suffered by the protagonist in “I, Daniel Blake.” In Loach’s eyes, both exist to keep the oiks firmly in their place.

Ranked as one of the greatest British films of all time, “Kes” ends on a note of acute sadness. Despite this, it is not altogether despairing. Kes has awakened Billy’s natural inquisitiveness; it gives him a taste of hope, and we get the sense that he is spirited enough to demand more.

“Kes” is available to stream or rent from Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV.