Kes

“Yours is the generation that doesn't listen!” is the defining line in Ken Loach's 1970 realist masterpiece Kes, which is ostensibly about a socially awkward young boy named Billy Casper (David Bradley) growing up in Barnsley, a drab working-class suburb north of Sheffield. While loosely aligned with the British New Wave of “angry young man” films that peaked in the mid-1960s, Kes' anti-authoritarian, generation-gap critique takes a more subtle and often tongue-in-cheek tack than its forebears (like Look Back in Anger). Fifteen-year-old Billy and his growing obsession with training a wild bird is the central motif; but it's really the self-important authority figures, relics of Britain's stodgy Victorian past, that Loach's lens unmercifully emphasizes. Combining light satire and relentless realism, Loach exposes the cane-wielding schoolmarms and brutish instructors ruling the grown-up world that hems Billy in. And when he's not being harassed at school, the lad comes home to a bullying, alcoholic brother (Freddie Fletcher) and indifferent mum (Lynne Perrie). So it's not surprising that he chooses to lose himself in a relationship with the friendly neighborhood kestrel. Remastered for DVD and its Blu-ray debut, extras include a “making of” documentary, Loach's 1966 short film Cathy Come Home, and a 1993 TV profile of the director. A simple story, powerfully rendered, this is highly recommended. Editor's Choice. (M. Sandlin)