Kes (1969) on Netflix
Fifteen-year-old Billy Casper is picked on at school and at home in a South Yorkshire mining town. He lifts a young kestrel from a farm nest and tries to train her.
- Netflix3.3/5
- IMDb7.9/1026,599 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes100%
Trailer
Plot summary
Billy Casper lives in a poor South Yorkshire community built around the coal mine where his older half-brother Jud works. His father left the family, and his mother takes little interest in him. Billy is bullied at home and at school, and he is due to leave without qualifications; Jud expects him to go down the mine, a job Billy refuses to consider. He steals eggs and milk, and his attention in class wanders. He lifts a young kestrel from a farm nest, steals a book on falconry from a secondhand shop, and begins training the bird, which he names Kes. His English teacher praises a talk he gives about her.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Kes (1969)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Both novel and film grew out of the Hines family. Author Barry Hines had taught at the school where the story is set, and his younger brother trained the real kestrel that inspired it after his own time at the local secondary modern, then worked on the production as handler for the birds used on screen.
- The Barnsley dialect proved a barrier abroad. Ken Loach recalled in a 2013 interview that United Artists screened the film for American executives who said they could understand Hungarian more easily, and some releases had scenes dubbed to soften the accent.
SPOILER
While raising the money, producer Tony Garnett was pressed to soften the ending, one suggestion being that Billy's teacher help him land a job at a zoo. Garnett refused, arguing that it would have betrayed a film aimed at the system rather than at individuals.- The mostly non-professional cast was often kept in the dark about what a scene held, so the shock and pain on the boys' faces as the bullying headmaster canes them is genuine.
- The poverty on screen was not exaggerated. Miners in that part of Yorkshire were reportedly the lowest-paid workers in any developed country at the time, and shortly before the film came out an unofficial strike shut the local coalfield down for a fortnight.
