Posted on by 1000filmsblog

#381 Kes

Watched: August 6 2026

Director: Ken Loach

Starring: David Bradley, Brian Glover, Freddie Fletcher, Lynne Perrie, Colin Welland, Bob Bowes

Year: 1969

Runtime: 1h 51min

Billy Casper (Bradley) is a working class boy who lives with his mum (Perrie) and his asshole big brother Jud (Fletcher) in Yorkshire. When he’s not in school, he helps support the household through his paper route and petty crime. He’s a cheeky little bastard, but overall very charming and likeable. He is also the poster boy for ADHD.

Literally the poster for ADHD*
*citation needed

Billy decides he’s in his kestrel era when he comes across a nest of the birds. After an unsuccessful attempt at conning a librarian into giving him a library card, he ends up (quite elegantly) stealing a book on falconry from a book shop instead. And then he starts studying.

The librarian clearly did not know about the code of librarians everywhere – if a child wants to learn, you let them fool you into giving them a library card. (There is of course the possibility that she is a Night Vale Librarian… In which case Billy’s lucky to escape with his life.)

Now, Billy may not be the brightest or most attentive student in school, and several people tease him for not being able to read, but when that hyperfocus kicks in it really kicks in. He reads diligently, kidnaps (chicknaps..?) one of the young kestrels and, with the book to guide him, starts training her.

Ah – the time before YouTube tutorials! Just a boy and his stolen book.

One of his teachers, Mr Farthing (Welland), picks up on his student’s new obsession and gets him to explain and teach his process to the other kids in his class. This in particular is a lovely scene which seems to be the only time Billy has ever been given any sort of praise and positive attention in school.

Thank the gods for Mr Farthing. Every other faculty member in the film is perpetuating the harmful stereotype that all teachers are failures, sadists, making up for being losers in school themselves, or just there to relive their glory days as they never amounted to anything. In reality, that is only true of some of us…

OK, Edgar, we know we haven’t exactly been vigorous in our blogging and we may have been letting you down a bit, but why are you determined to break our hearts like this??? We swear we’re good people deep down. Just easily distracted and somewhat lacking in the follow-through department. But we don’t deserve to be hurt this way…

Low key the best football scene in movie history though. We were more engaged than during the World Cup!

That being said, we loved a lot of things about this movie. Billy was awesome, Mr Sugden (Glover) was hilarious in the absolute worst way possible, the aforementioned scene where Billy is given the stage in class was beautiful, and there was a lot of good people and things sprinkled in amid all the horrible and depressing stuff. The overall feeling after watching it isn’t entirely bleak either – there is a lot of hope here. Still, the second half of the movie had us increasingly stressed as we suspected a happy ending was not forthcoming… Is it worth the watch? Yes, definitely. However, be prepared to feel many things.

Don’t worry – Billy and Kes became a rich and famous falconry act and lived happily ever after. Cheeky bastards.

What we learned: We stand by our decision that this movie should be titled Exploring ADHD With Kestrels.

MVP: Hyperfocus.

Next time: Last Summer (1969)