What a wonderful film Kes still is. Has Ken Loach ever bettered it? Barry Hines' simple story of a Barnsley boy - isolated, bullied by his thuggish older brother, destined for the local mine, but finding solace in discovering and training a kestrel - is genuine poetry. Dai Bradley is sublime as Billy, and Loach has recruited an excellent ensemble in support. Chris Menges' photography and John Cameron's music are also superb.

An amazing film. Funny and heartwarming. A real classic

Seen this movie so many times as a kid, great story , still great today

I was born in Sheffield and lived near that area in 1970. That's how it was. Period.

Watch this movie if anything just to watch the iconic, brilliant 'football match scene' with the late, great Brian Glover "a rare delight". Brilliant !

Very good coming of age movie set in a mean and bleak world for protagonist. His family school and others beat him over the head and wonder why he has issues.

Worst film I've ever seen and I've seen a lot. The acting was awful and the plot was non existent

Brilliant. Seen it loads of times. Never ages.

A Kestrel for a Knave was a book that has often formed part of the English syllabus in schools, and I am impressed that a book with such subject matter should acquire this honoured status. Ken Loach's film version, Kes is also considered suitable for older children, and doubtless many schoolchildren who read the book were also made to watch the film. It seems like a different age when political discussion was less infantilised, and it was possible for a book written by a socialist to be part of the mainstream education agenda, and indeed a work that criticises teaching in schools, and promotes reading and independent learning. Kes was directed by Ken Loach, a moviemaker of great integrity, who began a long collaboration with Barry Hines, in which he adapted the writer's scripts for movie or television. This led to many of Loach's early films being set in Yorkshire. Kes was Ken Loach's second feature film, and the one that made his name. It is still one of his most popular movies, but Loach's emphasis on authenticity has often made the widespread circulation of his movies difficult. For Kes, Loach kept the action in Barnsley, the home town of Barry Hines. The location is not mentioned in the film, but the Yorkshire accents were real enough, and many of the actors came from around the area. For this reason, American audiences struggled with the accents and dialect, and it is not uncommon for the film to be shown in America with subtitles. It was to be two years before the film was finally released over there. The dialogue is genuine in another way – the use of swearing and coarse language. Ken Loach began his career as a director for television, and perhaps this accounts for his emphasis on a more naturalistic style of moviemaking. His films have a grainy look. Some scenes are not well-lit. He employs jerky, hand-held cameras. Kes was filmed in sequence. The movie was made on a low budget, and the settings are suitably dreary. With the exception of Colin Welland and a few others, the cast were mostly not professional actors. Even Brian Glover, now a well-known figure from British television, was working as a teacher at the time. The headmaster that we see in the film was a real headmaster. Welland spent a week teaching in a school to make his performance seem more credible. The children really were caned by the headteacher, and paid 50p extra for their trouble. The subject matter of Kes, as with all of Loach's later films, is ordinary people. He deals in the unglamorous and mundane lives of working-class folk – working down the pit, drinking in clubs with live music performers, reading Desperate Dan comic strips, children with paper rounds, fish and chips, chatting with the milkman, or betting on the horses at the bookie's. Billy's love for Kes, the kestrel that he takes home, will help to take his mind to new places. This is a boy who did not even know where to find his local library, and yet he tries to join it so that he can borrow a book on kestrel training. When he is unable to become a member of the library, he steals a book. He has a dream, and this encourages him to learn. His new pastime even earns Billy some rare praise at school. He is asked to speak to the class about a subject of interest, and he is pushed into discussing Kes. His teacher Mr Farthing (Colin Welland) is genuinely interested in Billy's words, and even agrees to visit Billy and watch him as he trains Kes. Billy's predicament is that he knows that the rest of his life will not imrprove. Asked why he does not wish to go work when he does not like school, he replies, "I don't (like school), but it dun't mean to say I'll like work". He adds, "Still, I'll get paid for not likin' it." His position is stark, and the ending of the movie offers little hope that he can escape his fate. Nonetheless his position touches the heart, and shows that it is possible to make affecting drama about ordinary situations and poor people without reducing them to figures of comedy or pity. Kes helped to establish Ken Loach as the poet for the ordinary man, and he has consolidated that position ever since. I wrote a longer appreciation of Kes on my blog page if you would like to read more: https://themoviescreenscene.wordpress.com/2019/04/28/kes-1969/

Life is hard and full of retarded bullies. Kes is a growing flower in the soil, reaching for the stars. Cruel and brilliant, humane and painful.

Billy Casper, a Barnsley lad from a dysfunctional home, forms a relationship with a kestrel.

UK sometime makes good humane-realistic film, featuring working class and kids/youth. They learnt by themselves back then. This is another great documentation of the nation's then system and its scenery. I'm not from UK but feel that now it's almost disappearing since globalisation and social demographic change in Thatcher and Blair era. So, we don't see like this anymore. By the way, the accent in this film is extremely strong.

This is a good, solid piece of social commentary, about social poverty among the working classes at the time it was made (the late 1960s) about one young adolescent boy (called Casper) seeking solace in the form of a local kestrel nest, because he doesn't feel he's understood or certainly treated well by others in his local community. It's a thoughtful film with some relatively touching moments. It's not overly sentimental or excessively brutal in an unrealistic way. The old attitude of the angry menacing headmaster is enough to put a chill down most anyones spine, I'd imagine. It's sad to think it wasn't illegal for such people in authority to use corporal punishment back then. A good Ken Loach film, I'd recommend this, yes.

The tale of a kestrel who gets stolen, taken hostage by a child and then trained into subservience. As the bird gets Stockholm syndrome he refuses to fly away when released and instead is happy to eat roadkill for dinner. Eventually the bird is killed when the kidnapper gets in a feud with his brother. Subtitles are required as understanding the birds is quite difficult. Bit boring.

Billy Casper, a fifteen-year-old living in a northern England coal mining town, lives on the cusp of poverty with his hard-working mother and abusive brother. Small for his age, he is unable to find refuge at school as he is tormented by teachers and students alike. A loner by nature, he eventually finds comfort while training a kestrel he found on a nearby property. While many of the scenes run far too long (the soccer game, for example) and, truthfully, many will need subtitles to understand the thick accents, Ken Loach's Kes is a touching story of a young boy coming to terms with abuse, his apparent destiny in life, and loss. It is rough and gritty throughout, but has enough life truths for anyone to relate to.

The film sucks you into a perfectly portrayed reality, so that rather than watching a film you feel engaged in real life. The one exception may be the Brian Glover PE teacher football match scene but isn't there more than a grain of truth about PE teachers in that! The one scene I always remember is the little boy who is caned by mistake simply for taking a message to the headmaster who, of course, doesn't listen to what the boy is trying to tell him. Even small scenes like the one in the betting shop are perfectly realised - and one could argue that the very last scene defies the downbeat themes, giving the film a small but important uptick

A beautiful, emotionally involving film, that has stayed with me ever since I first saw it as a youth, evoking the struggles of childhood and the exhilaration of finding purpose. Consequently I have watched many films by Ken Loach and loved many of them.

It's really boring and absolutely nothing interesting happens. You'd be better off watching paint dry.

First, Kes is the most British movie I have ever seen. If you can get through the authentic Yorkshire accent (I personally used subtitles despite speaking English), it's a sparse but moving coming-of-age tale. Kes isn't narratively driven. Rather, it uses meaningful events from Billy Casper's (David Bradley) life, such as getting caned at school, getting in a fight, and spats with his brother. Mixed in the upheaval and oppression are moments of beauty, like his teacher taking the time to understand his hobby and Billy feeding Kes for the first time. While the movie is understated, I found that it grew on me more and more as time went on. One more thought. A kestrel is a perfect symbol for this film. The bird, like Billy, is a prisoner to its world. Billy has it trained so that it will never leave, even when presented with the opportunity to fly away in the open field. Billy is much the same way. He seems destined to end up in a manual labor job like his brother Jud. The fatalistic ending contrasts with the brief moments of escape and flight.

Uma historia comovente sobre uma criança rejeitada pela sociedade.