Movie "Kes"

Director: Ken Loach, Writers: Barry Hines, Ken Loach, Original Story: Barry Hines "A Kestrel for a Knave", Producer: Tony Garnett, Cinematography: Chris Menges, Editing: Roy Watts, Art: William McCrow, Music: John Cameron, Starring: David Bradley, Produced in 1969, Released in 1970 (released in Japan in 1996), British film, 110 minutes, Original title: Kes

Although it is a British film, it has a local accent and quite peculiar English is spoken.

Immediately after its release, it was broadcast on television in Japan under the title "Boy and Hawk", but it was not officially released until May 1996.

The original is titled "A Kestrel for a Knave", meaning "Boy's Kestrel". "Kestrel" is a kind of peregrine falcon called kestrel, and "Knave (néɪv)" is an archaic English word meaning boy. The setting is the early 1960s, in a deserted mining town in the Yorkshire countryside of England.

Fifteen-year-old Billy Casper (David Bradley) lives in poverty with his part-time mother and his older brother Judd (Freddie Fletcher), who works in a coal mine. rice field. Before he went to school in the morning, he was doing nothing but delivering newspapers. One day, while walking in the meadow, he saw a falcon flying and became interested. The next day, he found a nest and came back with a chick. After that, he refers to a book on how to keep a falcon, calls the falcon "Kesu", and trains it.・・・・

Billy is growing up healthy as a boy, but he doesn't get along with his mother and his brother, and is treated badly at school. He steals milk while delivering newspapers and shoplifts falcon books. He reads aloud comics in newspapers. In a country town in this age when there was no entertainment for children, this would have been the only fun they could have had. In that sense, his mother doesn't care much about Billy, and his older brother is only interested in women fishing and horse racing. Even so, Billy lived a cheerful and lively life as a boy. However, Billy, who never received the affection of his mother or brother, had the idea of ​​cherishing something for the first time when he met a falcon. An encounter with a falcon changed his life.

Billy, who didn't have a particular obsession, is very enthusiastic about raising falcons and training them, and it's rather a fun time. Because he didn't buy a betting ticket for a horse race requested by Judd, "Kes" was mercilessly killed by Judd and thrown into the trash can. After a big fight with Judd, Billy picks up "Kes"'s body from a trash can and buries it in a hole. The movie ends abruptly with this scene.

It was an impressive work. There are no particularly big incidents or situations, and the story development does not have big waves or sharpness. The school has a self-centered physical education teacher and an overbearing principal, but he does not intentionally criticize the school, which has these systemic colors, nor does he criticize his mother and brother. Billy himself has boyish slyness.

In this film, he does not take the means of denying something and asserting something. Whether it's my mother, my brother, my classmates, or my teachers, they portray what they shouldn't be, and by doing so, they try to appeal to the viewer's perception. If you call this cinematic realism, then yes.

As for Billy, I don't portray him as a pitiful existence. As a boy, he only captures his daily life as it is. Even so, or perhaps precisely because of that, Billy's interest and affection for the falcon, as well as his resentment and anger toward others, are depicted as they are. He flew "Kesu" for the first time, and when he returned, he only captured it from a distance, and he didn't even close up Billy's expression, such as being overjoyed or impressed.

The camera doesn't forget to frame the mining landscape. At the beginning, when Billy heads to the newspaper store where he works part-time, the scene of the town is projected. The same goes for the forest where Billy wanders, the meadow where he sees a flying falcon, and the scene where Billy flies the Kess. Billy's <here and now> is always in the frame.

A literature teacher, one of the few who understands Billy, makes his students talk about "past facts" in a class where "facts and fiction" is written on the blackboard. Billy can also be guessed, but he replied that there is nothing in particular. When another student tells him that he is training a falcon, the teacher makes Billy stand on the podium and talk about the training. With some excitement, Billy tells the "facts" about himself. Billy uses a special word related to training, so the teacher has the word written on the board. For example, jesses (ashio, plural of jess). This scene, in which Billy talks almost babbling about the process of training Kes, is perhaps the highlight of the film.

The appearance and physique of David Bradley, who played Billy, perfectly matched the content. In the case of boys, the presence of the boy's face and physique determines the quality of the work.

For Billy, "Kes", as Billy himself says, was neither a pet nor an object to be tamed, but a companion who could fly freely in the sky.

The theme of this work is a short story of a boy in a rural town. However, the manner in which that ending was portrayed will remain in my heart even afterward.