He is the British working class in a single, stout, has-been of a frame. Hell, he just might stand in for the entire United Kingdom, circa 1969. Past moments, few and fleeting, remembered instead as unparalleled triumphs; indications of transcendence, when few could even be bothered to give a damn. Reduced to teaching physical education to a group of indifferent lads, he has reimagined his thankless post as a resurrection of stiff-upper lipped heroism, whereby a sad, lonely field under an indifferent sky becomes Agincourt or Waterloo, with a leaden football at the center. An aging, boorish, nightmare of a man now instilling youth with both winning ways and daring hearts, though all involved know full well they are destined for the smokestacks, like dad and granddad before them.
Though onscreen for but a blip of time, he is everything director Ken Loach (in his debut) has come to loathe about the nation of his birth; the static, rigid, unfeeling class lines that doom man and woman alike from the opening bell. For if you find yourself crawling and squalling in Yorkshire, Yorkshire is where you’ll remain, with coal dust in your lungs and a liver deeply soaked in the local brew. No ifs, ands, or buts, and certainly no hope of escape. School, a multi-year task few complete, is but a preparatory academy for the humiliation and degradation you’ll happily ingest as an adult. For meager pay, naturally. Above all, it’s a way station for the only lesson worth a damn: authority exists, and it is to be obeyed. Getting out of line gets you the sack. And eventually the graveyard.
Brian Glover’s Mr. Sugden, then, is the million and one faces our hero, Billy, will face from now until eternity. Demanding deference where none is entitled, he uses slaps, kicks, and punches to reinforce his obvious inferiority. A meaningless game of soccer, perhaps just an opportunity to stretch the legs a bit, is transformed into nothing short of the World Cup; a grand excursion where the teacher (did he mention he once played for Manchester United?) cries foul, cheats, and bellows with such intensity you’d think the Empire were at stake. And when young Billy allows a game-winning goal, the chance to teach losing with humility becomes a further opportunity to grind the child to powder. The authoritarian-minded might see life lessons in masculinity, but this is anything but tough love. It’s about the total and unconditional surrender of will before it gets any bright ideas. Such notions, naturally, might interrupt the assembly line to the mine shafts.
Billy’s lone outlet for escape is his bird (the “Kes” of the title), where the chance to explore falconry is the last, best hope for an identity beyond a decidedly awful home life. That exit ramp will be blocked, of course (Loach is never one to provide easy answers or false hopes), but not specifically by Sugden. But the pitiless older brother who eventually snuffs out Billy’s brief joy is most assuredly a Sugden stand in. After all, he too attended that meat grinder of an institution, and the resulting callousness is exactly what the ruling elites need to ensure compliance. Working stiffs have always resorted to eating their own, and the true brilliance of the plan is that they’re made to think it’s their bloody idea. At the very least, their fault.
Step one in this dance with death is to elevate the trivial at the expense of individuality and intellect. Consider the scene where Billy brings home a tome on falconry, perhaps the first book that’s ever crossed the threshold of this drab flat. Billy’s brother handles it like it’s a scoop of plutonium, and he has no idea why anyone would bother with such a thing. And that’s exactly how Sugden wants it. Books have words, and words form ideas, and before you know it, we’ll all realize how shitty the whole enterprise has become. Eventually, alternatives will creep in, and isn’t that how the Union Jack lost India?
Step two, needless to say, is to marginalize humor. A laughing people are a proud people, and pride may as well be a sack of dynamite to the Sugdens of the world. Allow but one joke, and sooner than later, the quips will extend to the fat nitwit hanging out far too long around the boys’ locker room. Humor forever and always remains the surest route to deflate pomposity, which is why the forces of reaction and censorship come first for the comedy. And in the English-speaking world, the class clown is almost always at the head of the line to get the switch.
Year after year, generation after generation, Mr. Sugden wakes up, sucks in his gut, fakes a push-up or two, and wanders over to his fiefdom for the singular purpose of extinguishing any hint of flame that dares burn bright. Glory in conformity, nobility in suffering, all to delay the setting sun for but a moment longer. Where rules become a means of suffocation, and most stopped making sense somewhere around Victoria’s last gasp. Cruelty as a means to an end, and eventually the end itself. Sadly, Billy’s beloved bird is dispatched to the trash bin, both as a literal fact and an unavoidable national allegory. The hawk, you see, was free. Defiant and untethered. It never stood a chance.
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