Friday Film - Kes (1969)

Not every film that inspires Hikerdelic needs to be a direct influence. It doesn't need to be set in the outdoors, with boots and jackets on show, at least not always. In these times of CGI blockbusters about superheroes, Kes stands up as something altogether more real. Put together by the wonderful Ken Loach in an age before Gore-Tex and hiking for leisure really took hold, it's the perfect example that adventure can be found in ordinary places.

Sometimes all you need is a field, a bit of imagination and, in the case of Billy Casper, a kestrel you've pinched from a nest.

Released in 1969, Kes is one of the finest British films ever made. It's also, in its own understated way, one of the best films about the relationship between people and nature. Not the sort of nature you see in outdoor clothing adverts, with dramatic mountains and suspiciously attractive people looking windswept. This is nature as it exists on the edges of ordinary life. Scruffy fields, patches of woodland and the bits of countryside that haven't yet been swallowed up by housing estates.

Based on Barry Hines' novel A Kestrel for a Knave, the film follows Billy Casper, a fifteen-year-old growing up in a South Yorkshire mining community. School is miserable, home life isn't much better, and the expectation is that he'll eventually follow previous generations into the coal industry.

Then Billy discovers a kestrel nesting in a ruined building and begins teaching himself the ancient art of falconry.

Suddenly, he's found something he's good at.

He borrows books from the library, studies the techniques involved in training birds of prey and develops an extraordinary understanding of an animal most people around him barely notice. In one particularly memorable classroom scene, Billy describes training Kes with a confidence and enthusiasm entirely absent from his usual schoolwork. It's also an important illustration of how intelligence doesn't always reveal itself in conventional education.

The film also offers a fascinating portrait of working-class access to the countryside. Billy doesn't belong to a rambling club, spend weekends in the Lake District or own any specialist outdoor equipment. The landscape is simply there, on the doorstep of the community where he lives. 

For generations of working-class children, the outdoors meant the rough ground behind the houses, the local woods, the disused railway line or the fields separating one town from another. Places to explore without requiring much money or adult supervision.

Kes captures northern England at the end of the sixties, where coal mines, terraced housing and green fields existed side by side. The clothing is equally ordinary: school uniforms, simple knitwear and practical garments.

And then there's Brian Glover's magnificent performance as PE teacher Mr Sugden. His football lesson, in which he appoints himself Bobby Charlton and generally behaves as though he's playing in the World Cup final, remains one of British cinema's funniest and most memorable scenes.

But beneath the humour, Kes is a story about adventure and freedom. At home and school, Billy has little control over his circumstances. Out in the fields, training his kestrel, he discovers patience, responsibility and a sense of purpose.

More than fifty years later, it's a reminder that the outdoors doesn't have to be a destination. Sometimes the most meaningful adventures happen much closer to home.

Who cares what you're wearing?