Welcome to the Cheap Seats by Andrew Graves

Author:Andrew Graves
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781910170731
Publisher: Five Leaves Publications
Published: 2019-09-17T00:00:00+00:00

But when that hope is torn asunder in the film’s climax, we are torn apart too. Jud, gruff and spiteful, bent out of shape by his lack of opportunity, vents his frustration on his mother and her string of boyfriends and his younger brother Billy. Like countless others he washes away the bitter taste in his mouth with copious amounts of alehouse bitter and gambles what’s left of his wages on dodgy nags at the local bookies. In some ways, it’s hard not to feel sorry for Jud. He is, of course, a victim of the same one-way contamination which blights Billy’s life, but the vindictiveness he shows in the final reel of the film is hard to forgive.

When Jud leaves instructions for his younger sibling, already busy with school and two daily paper rounds, to place a bet for him, Billy, sensing the odds will not go in Jud’s favour, spends the stake money instead. The would-be bet comes good and Jud is left severely out of pocket. ‘I could have had a week off work with that.’ Out on the rampage, Jud first goes to Billy’s school and when he is unable to find him he stalks away with rage in his eyes. It is not until Billy returns home that we understand the full level of Jud’s cruelty. He has taken Billy’s beloved Kes, wrung its neck and left it in the bin.

The once-impressive bird is now a limp and lifeless shell, left to rot alongside old newspapers and dented baked bean tins. It’s a fitting metaphor for Billy’s own closed-in future of clanking mechanised dirt and disappointment.

Kes is a hard watch. Which isn’t to say that it isn’t funny or entertaining or expertly put together, because it definitely is, but the closing moments alone make it all the more challenging, and what’s more the tragedy is bigger than a dead bird in the rubbish. As terrible as that image is, with everything it represents, we know that Billy’s life, as crappy as it is already, is probably going to get worse, forced through a revolving-door existence of menial work and lack of opportunity, another nameless link in the cycle of constructed poverty, an easy target in an ideological war declared by the powers-that-be and a skewed education policy. As Loach says:

The objective role of a secondary modern is to produce a certain amount of unskilled labour… The school and the youth employment officer cannot recognise that [Billy] has qualities, or they’ve got to find someone else to fill his manual job from the pool of eleven-plus failures.

Loach’s most recent film, I, Daniel Blake, was undoubtedly important, shining a light on the government’s shocking lack of humanity in failing to provide adequate financial support for those not able to work through sickness or incapability. It was expertly crafted and delivered its own fair share of gut-punching moments, such as the poignant food bank scene where malnourished mother Katie (Hayley Squires), weak with hunger, forces down a mouthful of cold baked beans out of the sight of her two young children.

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