Great Brits: KES (1969)

  Even if you have never seen Ken Loach’s 1969 film “Kes” you will be familiar with its iconic, grainy black and white defining image. For nearly forty-one years the film’s young star, David Bradley, has yelled “fuck you” with two of his fingers from the shelves of our video, book and  DVD shops; standing out from the crowd much un-like the lowly, working class life it depicts. In Britain, Kes has a special place in our hearts and minds. It is an incredibly low-budget film and could easily have been wiped off the face of the earth upon release; but this sad and honest story has lived on and grown. Based on Barry Hines book “A Kestrel for a Knave” - It is a heart-felt story, symbolic of a hugely important era in the history of our country.

Billy Casper, described by his brutish older brother Jud as a “weedy little twat” and by teachers as “a bad ‘un,” lives a life with little luxury. His council estate home in Yorkshire has been built around the mines – or “pits” – from which its citizens work and his home life is dominated by shouting matches between himself, Jud and their single mother. Abandoned by their father at a young age, the Casper’s are notorious in their estate. The film captures Billy at a transitional point in his teen years. Having newly turned his back on his old gang of friends, he sets off on a new friendship with nature; where he finds his footing in life. In nature and wildlife he finds a passion and capacity to learn which teachers and family alike never believed he had.  

  The first fifteen minutes or so of Kes lay the foundations of the film and the life lead by it’s lead character, and it’s a life chock-a-block with paper-rounds, early morning back-and-forth with his brother and his employer, nicking sweets from the shop and milk and eggs from the milkman, finally finishing before his school day begins with Billy reading the Dandy on a hill overlooking the smoky industry of his hometown (ina fittingly beautiful shot.) Here we see a nice young lad – borderline scoundrel – with the hard head and the smarts of a child brought up into a rough world. The banter he shares with the milkman (“first class ridin’s better than first class walkin”) humours the viewer; the shot of him reading the Dandy in youthful ignorance of the smoky destiny which awaits him reminds us of his fate. We know from the start that Kes is a film about a young man with no way out; until of course Kes herself presents one.

  Billy is a young man who is visibly unsure about his future, he dislikes school and at the same time he dislikes the idea of work (“but at least ah’ll be paid for not likin’ it”). He does not excel at school, only showing interest in what is not forced on him. Nature is truly his field of study. Through his love for nature he is granted a purpose in life where there was no purpose before; his brother and his mother having squeezed that out of him along with his sense of belonging. At school, if he is not being ignored, he is being bullied by students and teachers alike. The scenes within the school show us a children’s point of view on their education, here we see why so many are keen to rebel against the teachers, many of whom are clinging onto a then-dying method of teaching through fear and physical punishment (caning) unable to accept that times are changing. These youths see school as a pointless intermission between childhood and manhood. A needless preparation for years and years of hard labour.

  There is an excellent scene early on in the film which displays the relationship between Billy and Jud. Forever at each others necks; the two brothers are constantly offloading their frustrations at the world upon each other. In this scene Billy – usually the punch bag – sees the tables turn. Returning home from a night at the pub, Jud stumbles to his room and to the bed he shares with Billy. He struggles to remove his trousers and commands Billy to help him take them off; Billy – reluctant – obliges. When his brother is in states such as this it is clearly the only opportunity Billy has to insult him without receiving a beating. Billy puts his brother to bed and afterwards begins to insult him, spitting in his face “Pig, ‘OG, Drunken Bastard!” – Before striking him across the face. In a spur-of-the-moment decision Billy runs from his brother and out to the woods, then to the farm where he had earlier spotted the nest of a Kestrel Falcon. He climbs the ruined wall – atop which is the nest – and grabs the young Kes.

  It is with the aptly named “Kes” that Billy forms the strongest relationship in the whole story. His hawk cannot thump him, insult him, bully him or dampen his spirit; and so Kes becomes his passion, his best friend and his closest family. Billy connects with other characters in the film: Mr Farthing, apparently one of the only decent teachers at the school, who takes a liking o Billy and his hawk, and his own mother – but she is distant, slightly cold and extremely self-absorbed. Besides the connection between himself and Kes the only character on the same level as Billy is the farmer whom he speaks to briefly -  he too is a man in awe of nature, free of the city like Billy longs to be ; a man of the outdoors.

  Though in the end the film is about young Billy and Kes - and the heart and determination this supposedly hopeless case of a boy pours into training it – the film’s best scenes take place within the grounds of the school. There is a scene where Billy and several of his classmates are sent to the headmaster’s office for punishment. An innocent young boy of ten or eleven with a message for the headmaster ends up mingled amongst the crowd of lads awaiting punishment; but the headmaster, not listening to the young innocent, drags him into his ritual. The scene ends – after the ignorant headmaster’s rant at “The generation that never listens” – with each boy receiving a caning per hand. He punishes the innocent boy for a misdemeanour he never committed. This scene shows us the blind anger with which schools such as this one were run; the great contradiction of the character of the headmaster being his ignorance. Ranting and raving, he inflicts pain on the generation which never listens on a daily basis, and when an innocent speaks out for himself – he is silenced and beaten. The headmaster himself is the one who is not listening. He creates the anger and sense of injustice which makes the children unruly.

  Billy finds himself singled out to bullying by one teacher in particular, the great buffoon that is Mr Sugden – a teacher with no regard whatsoever for the principles of teaching. His aim is simply to score goals at the game of football, beating his opponents no matter what their age or stature. Mr Sugden rounds on Billy at every opportunity, viewing him as the butt of all his most glorious and idiotic jokes. Mr Sugden represents, alongside the headmaster, the ignorant face of the educational system. His goal as a teacher should be to improve the lives of his pupils and to prepare them for the future; but his only intent is to participate in fantasy games of football (Man United Vs The Spurs) – placing himself as striker and ref , authority and star, so that he may be viewed by these children as the popular, centre of attention he never has been or would be anywhere else. Mr Sugden blames Billy (placed in goals) for the outcome of the match. Forcing Billy to shower after the game, he waits until the showers are empty, commands some large boys to block the exit and changes the shower temperatures to freezing. The joke is wasted on everyone but Mr Sugden, believing himself to be a master trickster, but he does not bargain on Billy clambering over the wall of the showers – stark naked, freezing and slippery – to applause from his school mates. This moment displays Billy’s spirit in the face of intimidation.

  Collin Welland’s performance as Mr Farthing is one of the films strongest and Farthing himself is one of the films most endearing characters. In a school holding onto an ageing and strict system, he is the only teacher we see who shows a genuine passion for his job; he is the fresh face of change. When Billy gets into a fight with the bully Macmillan – where he is beaten on a pile of coal (fitting to the mining community where the story is set) - Mr Farthing breaks it up. He assesses the situation with justice, pinpointing Macmillan as the aggressor before rounding on him. He squashes Macmillan’s ego with a rant which is a mixture of intimidation and decency. In reply to Macmillan’s old “My Dad’ll” claim he roars, “MY Dad’s heavyweight champion of the WORLD!” He cares not whether Macmillan’s father storms round the corner with a cricket bat to give him a hiding; his only concern is his moral integrity, to sticking up for what is right.

  In another scene Mr Farthing is teaching a class the difference between “fact and fiction” – a theme which represents the story of Kes itself. The story is both fact and fiction; the characters are fictional yet their story, their environment and their hardships are believable, and in that sense very real. We feel a great connection with the characters in the film, as if we may have passed them in the streets; or that they have drifted in and out of our lives somehow. Billy is forced by Mr Farthing to share a story with the class which is pure fact. Reluctant at first, he later begins an engaging speech about the training of his beloved hawk. He absorbs the class and the teacher (and us, the audience) alike in his speech. It is here that we see for the first time the length of Billy’s commitment to Kes; prompting Mr Farthing to request to see Billy and Kes in action. In his speech to the class we can see the nerves on the face of the young actor and feel it on every word. For a teenager with no experience in film whatsoever, this moment must have been a real challenge; but it shows just how pure an actor the young David Bradley was. Fresh off the street, confident, innocent; there is a very fine line between the actor himself and the fictional character of Billy Casper.

  Kes is a film which aims to teach us about morality. It will also, by the time it reaches its heart-breaking conclusion teach you about the cruel nature of life. The story itself is a lesson in fact and fiction, on fate and destiny; and it poses a question. If your future is certainly a life of hard labour (in “t’pits”) then what was the real need for years of school and strict punishment? We see the educational system exposed as a pointless exercise. When the young children gather for an assembly we see this in full. The teachers, high above on the stage, ruling over the young ones whom they train for a life of labour in offices and mines – where they will work for years on poor wages. The assembly comes fittingly after a scene documenting the start of Jud’s work day in the mines. The Faces of the miners – young and old and middle aged – collide and converse; bored, happy or tired – and they are the faces of the determined people who kept Britain afloat. It shows us the position of Britain’s working class in this era – the sun rising and gleaming off of their hardhats.

  The character of Billy Casper is beaten by the end, his life devoid of joy; his youth fading away into a dusty, undetermined future. By this point we can feel his childhood and adulthood merging into one dark blur. The point of Kes therefore is to present to the viewer in full the harsh world in which we live. This is a film which is not about Casper’s youth; but about the death of his youth and the victory of his aggressors. Billy, like Kes, longed to fly away, to roam the skies a free spirit detached from contact with others; but by the final shot of the film – which will stick with us forever – we learn life is not so kind.

  Billy’s struggle, both at home and at school, is symbolic of the struggle faced by Great Britain after the Second World War, the economic and moral struggle to get back on our feet, to keep working towards a better future for our people. Casper himself is a portrait of the post-war youth, beaten on all fronts, confused. Torn. His struggle was ours; his pain is ours to share. Perhaps this is why Kes has lived on, loved, for so many years. Upon its release, audiences could connect to the character of Billy because he was to them a modern child; his life mirrored the lives of many. Nowadays we connect to Billy because he connects us to our past. We watch him and draw admiration from his tough life; in awe of his passion and determination.

  Kes is a miracle of a film in many ways. It has the potential to change your life with its messages about youth and Britain’s-then-educational system. It is a grainy film, old-fashioned in every way; it’s cinematography – basic - there is no great mastery of the camera here. The most in terms of soundtrack that it has to offer is the occasional flute playing in certain moments, accompanied occasionally by one or two chords from an acoustic guitar. It is, to be perfectly honest, a flawed film; but when we assess it - the miniscule cast and crew, the sliver of money that was the budget- the film is a true miracle to have been made and to have survived for four decades still loved by so many. Its “flaws” - the inexperienced actors, dodgy cuts, dodgy sounds and dark lighting – become its greatest strengths. The film practically runs on natural light. The shots filmed within the rooms of Billy’s council estate home are lit only by the daylight which spills in through the windows. It is all perfectly fitting to the story; everything adds to the realism of the environment and the film’s era. Every aspect of Kes’ production has made it stronger and more powerful in every way. Ken Loach has made this environmental realism a signature of his films, bringing the feel of Kes into such modern gems as “Sweet Sixteen” and “Looking For Eric.” At the time of Kes, across the Atlantic, the look of cinema was changing forever to a rock’n’roll beat, doped up on weed, booze and rebellion with films such as Bonnie and Clyde, Easy Rider and M.A.S.H. Britain however, remained in limbo. Kes presents this unchanging sameness, the frozen society of labourers, the cold towns in the North of England which were apparently immune to the Cultural Revolution gripping the rest of the Western World.

  Kes is a life lesson. Bill Casper is the pupil who becomes the teacher. His story preaches the unfairness of his existence, the pain of living and of dying. Though “Kes” herself has limited screen time, by the film’s conclusion she will no doubt have broken your heart into pieces and set up an uncomfortable nest in its remains; here she will stitch the pieces back together. Kes moves you in a way which is rare, spearheaded by a sadness which will linger with you forever like the true pain of loss.