Kes (1969)

“KES” is a 1969 film from Ken Loach which tells the story of a young boy called ‘Billy’ (David Bradley) whose family is so poor that he has a job of his own as a paperboy, and only has one set of clothes. He lives with his mother and brother who take no interest in him and push him to the side to be with their friends. Early on in the film Billy finds a bird while out playing, a kestrel, which he takes and gives the name KES. KES becomes the only living thing that Billy actually likes being with, the only living thing that doesn’t bully him.

The performance from David Bradley was surprisingly good, when considering how young he was when he shot this. The fact that he didn’t get more roles after this shocks me, even though he won a BAFTA for his performance.

I think the relationship between KES and Billy works because literally everyone else is just mean and self-obsessed. KES seems to be Billy’s way of getting away from his problems in life, forgetting about the poverty, the bullying and not knowing what to do once he gets out of school. KES is Billy’s way of being free.

Weirdly enough, Billy’s brother Jud feels like another version of Billy, a version of Billy without KES, a version of Billy who without having someone to express their feelings to, turns into someone who just expresses themselves through anger and pain. This goes for almost all of the side characters and even extras in the film, all of them have experienced pain, so much in fact that they have become desensitized to their situation and environment.

The only problem I had with the film was the colour palette for the first 30 minutes. My eyes couldn’t focus on anything during that time because there were no colours which would draw my attention to the screen. There was a moment early on when the screen just went black for about 5 seconds, while Billy was climbing a wall at night. It got better as it went along, like there were actual stand out colours like reds and blues to focus on. I understand that it was an intentional choice by Loach to make the colours drained out, and that does work for the rest of the movie, but for those 30 minutes I just couldn’t make out the characters, which really frustrated me.

The main character Billy, strangely enough, is very similar to Sebastian in Loach’s most recent film “Sorry We Missed You”. The two films only share the same director, not the same writer. But Sebastian seems like a version of Billy but living in the 21st century. Each one is going through poverty and not sure what they are going to do with their lives after school. They deal with their problems differently, according to the century they come from. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was intentional by Loach.

The only thing that I would say is dated about KES is the way that the adults in the film treat the children. Because it’s been 40 years since KES was released, there have been many developments in society and how children are treated by adults in school. So it dates in the sense that most kids are no longer in situations like they would’ve been in the 20th century schools, but the situation with poverty still remains. His films are always better to watch when they are released, because they are more socially relevant. But that also technically makes the film age better in a way, knowing that the stuff that children went through at the time no longer happens is reassuring, but it also shows that children in those days had it much harder than modern day children, and that’s important to remember.

In conclusion, KES stands out as a film that becomes more and more interesting to watch as time goes on. It has some pretty impressive performances from the child actors, even though there’s some stuttering from side characters. Anyway, the point is that this film deserved to be seen by way more people. I know that American audiences haven’t watched it because of the actors accents. Don’t let that scare you, it’s worth watching.