Kes: Most beautiful movie in the Cosmos?

This movie's overwhelming. I mean "Oh my God I've found out the meaning of life and now the tears won't stop flowing!" overwhelming. When I first read that it was listed in the British Film Institute's top ten British films of all time, I was skeptical. I blame my distrust of institutions, since if the BFI thinks that highly of "Kes", then they and I are most definitely in the same boat.

"Kes" is about a boy, Billy Casper. Billy lives with his mother and older brother Jud. Jud's a fucking monster, beating Billy for the most petty of things and having verbal dog-fights every five seconds with their mother. School-life is no better. Almost every single one of Billy's teachers seems to be merely a sadist masquerading under the guise of educating youth, like villains from Pink Floyd's "The Wall".
His life in the shitter, Billy finds reprieve when he manages to wrangle a young Kestrel outta it's mother's nest. Naming it Kes, he begins to train and raise the falcon, in effect finding something worthwhile in his seemingly bleak existence.

Kes, a little bashful before the camera, looks off to the side.

Beautiful, heart-breaking, and bloody powerful. Those three words come to mind when I think of "Kes"(Wait, is that four words? Snap). Be it the lead's performance (This kid has to be seen to be believed) or the unflinching terribleness of the way the characters treat one another, it all feels blisteringly real, almost mythical in quality. "Kes" reflects more about the human condition than hundreds of supposedly "emotionally riveting" Oscar-nominated dramas I've had the misfortune of seeing. In case you haven't gathered by how much I'm gushing, this movie is really something else.
The setting does much to give it that certain mythic quality I mentioned in the prior bit. I don't know about language in Northern England today, but in 1969 it still sounded like a indecipherable off-shoot of Old English. The rough-edged folk populating the movie speak in thou's and thee's and view physical abuse as a simple way of communicating with one another. They also seem one and all scoundrels, even the kinder characters lapsing into condescension or slappings. The coal mine and factories dominate Billy Casper's homeland, and yet they're still fields and woods all about. It truly seems a different era, despite having been filmed forty or so years ago.

Bloody fairytale ogre's. Those are the folks running the school, I tell ya.

"Kes" doesn't stop with simply being an emotional ride and capturing an era. It also exposes a criminal system. The children of the film aren't the only victims of the education system. The entire town's population is. In a very telling speech from the principal, he elaborates on how throughout the ages, boys never learn. He's not only about to give the strap to the students before him, but he's done so to their father's and older brother's before them. Is it any wonder the entire male populace seems to speak to one-another with emasculating insults and fisticuffs?
This can of course, be viewed as an attack on the whole of the system at the time. The schools were after all built around the idea of churning out disciplined workers for the factories and office's of England. What use for things like sentimentality or expression?

I can't say much more about "Kes" without suddenly launching into song about how much I adored certain scenes and how many tears came to my eyes, so I'll simply say this: Watch the bloody movie. I swear, it'll change you in some way, definitely for the better.