FILM.
KES
1969 | DIRECTED BY KEN LOACH
So Kes is short for kestrel which is a type of small falcon but everyone refers to Billy’s bird as a hawk which is to say British English makes no sense.
I learned the UK has a word for a zucchini-like vegetable “marrow” and there’s a scene where a band uses it as innuendo and everyone is laughing and dancing including old grammies.
There’s also a huge loser gym teacher who challenges grade school kids to a soccer match and takes and retakes penalty kicks by fiat and aggressively fouls ten-year-olds and ejects his child rivals from the game and still loses.
I’m pretty simple: I come across a movie with an outsider kid protagonist and I watch it. This one took me a while to get to for some reason. It’s not quite great but it’s definitely good.
Some of the landscape shots alone make it worth the watch. And poor hapless Billy is easy to root for. Plus it’s often really funny (see above). And you get to see a boy train a falcon. Or a hawk. Or whatever it is.