Is Kes still Ken Loach’s best film? | Little White Lies

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Is Kes still Ken Loach’s best film?

11 Nov 2016

Words by David Jenkins

Person in dark clothing holding a large leaf in a lush, green environment.
Person in dark clothing holding a large leaf in a lush, green environment.
A sparkling new Blu-ray edi­tion helps remind of this melan­choly British clas­sic from 1969.

On some days, you might opt for 1995’s Land and Free­dom or 1993’s Rain­ing Stones when it comes to select­ing Ken Loach’s great­est movie. Yet, all ratio­nal dis­cus­sions inevitably loop back to 1969’s Kes, the director’s most ele­giac, ugly-beau­ti­ful por­trait of dai­ly work­ing class strug­gles in Britain. What has helped the film to retain its pow­er after all these years is that it’s one of the director’s rare for­ays into poet­ic allegory.

He tends to make films that are blunt, terse and didac­tic (often unapolo­get­i­cal­ly so), and Kes is a sto­ry which (still) tran­scends time and place in its explo­ration into the lim­its of per­son­al free­dom. Knock-kneed north­ern runt Bil­ly Casper (David Bradley) is like a walk­ing whip­ping boy for every­one he encoun­ters. He’s vic­timised and humil­i­at­ed on an almost-hourly basis, yet he appears eter­nal­ly unboth­ered by his sta­tus as a social pariah.

His life gains pur­pose when he dis­cov­ers a kestrel which he decides to tend to in his spare time. Scenes of Bil­ly teach­ing him­self the art of fal­con­ry are some of the most lyri­cal that Loach has ever shot. They have an oth­er­world­ly glow to them, as if Bil­ly has some­how entered into an earth­bound arca­dia away from the toils of his dai­ly life.

By way of a coun­ter­point, the famous foot­ball match sequences, over­seen by Bri­an Glover’s orri­ble gym teacher, is a vision of hell. Casper is sec­ond from last to be picked (the fat kid is last), is forced into goal, abused by the teacher, and even­tu­al­ly pushed into a pud­dle of mud. The clam­our, vio­lence and hope­less­ness of the sequence – a metaphor for life under a dic­ta­tor­ship – evokes a ner­vous laugh­ter. This new Mas­ters of Cin­e­ma release includes a new­ly com­mis­sioned mak­ing-of doc and Loach’s cru­sad­ing home­less­ness TV movie, Cathy Come Home.

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