Completed Once Again

Films: I, Daniel Blake
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

There is a genre of film—not a very American genre in this case—about how much it sucks to be poor. There’s a vast swath of American politics that sees the poor not as people to be helped or even pitied, but as people to be denigrated. It’s why poor people in American movies are often not that poor. In an average ‘80s teen movie, for instance, the “poor” kids still live in decent-sized houses and often have cars that their parents have bought for them. Middle-class qualifies as poor for Hollywood in many cases. Cross the ocean (or the southern border), and you’ll find films about people who are on the fringes of society, barely able to survive. England is great for films like this, so it’s not much of a surprise that I, Daniel Blake falls firmly into this genre.

I, Daniel Blake is one of the modern darlings of U.K. cinema, evidence by the fact that it was released in 2016 and has already shown up in a Criterion edition. I have to say I’m a little bothered by this sort of instant “it’s a classic” acceptance for any film. I enjoyed the hell out of a bunch of 2017 films, and I’d look sideways at a Criterion edition for any of them. It’s too damn soon, too forced. I, Daniel Blake is a fine movie for what it is, but to be given this sort of treatment? It feels premature.

Animal Cruelty

Film: Kes
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

There are times when I watch something and I wonder not what I was thinking, but what the director was thinking. Then again, there are times when I appear to know precisely what the director was thinking all along. I’m going to warn you now that this review will contain spoilers; as usual, I will warn you with a tag when they show up. However, once you get the basic gist of what this film is about, I’m fairly confident that you’ll be able to figure out the spoilers on your own without my assistance.

Kes has been sitting in my instant queue since the day it became available instantly, and while I’ve been meaning to watch it for a few months, I’d never found the right moment until tonight. It was finally just time to get it off the list. I knew the basics going in, and figured on pretty much how the story would play out, and damn me if I wasn’t pretty much right from start to finish. This film explores much the same basic territory as earlier films like How Green was My Valley as well as later films like Billy Elliot and the more recent Fish Tank.

Young Billy Caspar (David Bradley) is the quintessential Yorkshire juvenile delinquent. His father is dead, and his home life is a terrible shambles. He is consistently bullied and brutalized by his older brother, Judd (Freddie Fletcher). His mother (Lynne Perrie) considers him a hopeless case and spends her evenings in the bars, leaving young Billy on his own. His school life is not any better. His teachers and the administration of his school are even more bullying and brutalizing than his brothers. It’s ugly and nasty. It’s the exact sort of thing parodied in a number of Monty Python sketches. Funny there, terrifying here. Truthfully, Billy earns some of this. On his daily paper round, he steals things off a milk cart.

Things change for Billy when he discovers a nest of kestrels on a nearby farm. Unable to get permission to borrow books from the local library, he steals a book on falconry from a used bookstore, and then goes and takes one of the birds from the nest. Using the book, he begins to train the small hawk, giving him something that is for himself and something that makes him truly happy. This gives him the first real praise he ever gets at school, when he is forced to give a talk on his bird in one of his classes. Of course, just before this he has his hands whipped by the schoolmaster for smoking, and just after he gets in a fight with a larger boy, but for the first time, he has someone to stick up for him: his teacher.

*** THE BIRD IS OFF THE LEASH ***

Of course, with a bullied kid who has something special, beautiful, and fragile, it’s not that difficult to figure out where things are going to end up. Billy manages to piss off his brother by not placing a bet on a horse for him—a horse that managed to come in. Judd, unable to take out his rage on Billy, kills Kes. Billy, whose horizons have been opened up a bit, leaves to bury his bird rather than stay for the confrontation.

Dammit, I hate this. I really do. I said a couple of months ago that it seems like coming of age stories focus on two different things. For girls, coming of age seems to always be about sex of one sort or another; girls can’t become women until they discover sex. For boys, a coming of age always centers on the death of someone or something special to them. Fellow blogger Dr. Blood commented recently in a review of Drag Me to Hell that animal death, even when necessary to the plot, is something disgusting. I agree. I knew it was coming and it still did nothing to brace me from the anger of that moment. I want movies to take me away from this sort of senseless violence, not force me to watch it. I want an ending that the film deserves, not one that sees an act of cruelty left to fester.

*** THE BIRD RETURNS TO THE HAND ***

Kes, for as much as it pisses me off, is a beautifully shot film. But I really wanted a lot more of Billy and Kes. I wanted more of the flying scenes, because these are really something special. The soccer game, which proves to be just another humiliation for Billy at the hands of one of his sadistic teachers, goes on for what feels like 10 minutes. We get the gist of the scene much more quickly—the gym teacher is a complete bastard who seems to dislike children in general and who takes out his own frustrations on his charges. Billy is uninterested in the game and is chastised (and mildly brutalized) because of it. We get it; Billy’s life sucks.

I want more of the joy. I suppose in a very real sense that it's logical that the joy comes sporadically and then quickly. But that to me was the heart of the film, not the stupid soccer game or the lecture about smoking.

Final analysis? Filmgoers love animals. Filmmakers hate animals.

Why to watch Kes: It’s a truly beautiful film.
Why not to watch: Because you should probably watch Billy Elliot instead.