One Paragraph Movie Review: Kes

Two hundred and eighty-second film: Kes, a 1969 British film about a poor working class schoolboy whose main glimmer of joy in life is training a kestrel he found, and I just don’t know where to put this movie in my brain. It’s amazing to watch — not a single person in it seems like they’re acting and the realism means that I caught myself making multiple extremely expressive reaction faces. In every scene you forget you’re watching a movie and sink underwater in a big grimy bath full of realism. There’s a song about a big long marrow in a Saturday night letting-off-steam pub. A PE teacher who runs a game of soccer like he’s seeking revenge for not being a career footballer. There’s a boy who only came to the headmaster’s office to deliver a message but ends up being caned by mistake. And there’s the absolutely incredible David Bradley playing Billy Casper, the kid who looks up at adults like someone who only ever thinks of comfort as temporary. Where do I put it? It’s both deflating and amazing, and it has Yorkshire accents in it. I won’t watch it again, but I’ll think about it for days. Four coal pile punch-ups out of five.