THE BEST PORTRAIT OF THE ECONOMIC STATE AND WORKING-CLASS OPPRESSION.
possibly ever, this film perfectly captures the everyday suffocation of being born poor and the system is set up to crush dreams before they start. also how schools are preparing kids not for growth, but for obedience and low-wage labor.
in the philippines, you’ll hear “mag-aral ka nang mabuti para umangat ka sa buhay” over and over again, study hard so you can have a better life. but what they don’t say is that the playing field isn’t level. a kid from the province with no internet, no lunch money, and parents who work themselves sick just to survive is expected to compete with someone from private school, who has tutors, stable power, and a quiet place to study. and when the poor kid struggles or fails, society blames them for not trying hard enough, never questioning the system that made it almost impossible in the first place. just like billy, so many kids are told they can be anything, but only within the walls of what the world already expects of them nurse, seaman, teacher, ofw never artist, writer, dreamer. if you dare to dream beyond what’s “practical,” people laugh. if you don’t dream at all, they call you lazy. there’s no winning.
“a story about a boy and his bird kestrel” this is not. kes becomes a metaphor for everything billy doesn’t have like freedom, respect, and the ability to rise above his environment. training kes becomes billy’s way of reclaiming control, of proving (maybe just to himself) that he can do something. that he is capable. that he matters. but the tragedy, ofc, is that the world doesn’t allow kids like billy to dream for long. the ending showing us that the system not only fails working-class kids it destroys the few things they find to hold on to.
rated 5 stars and instantly placed in my top 4 favorites. i usually lean toward the more depressing side of coming-of-age films, but i also deeply love this kind, that feels so real, it becomes personal and political at the same time. films like güeros (2014) and ratcatcher (1999) that so deeply connected to the struggles of society. this film belongs with them.
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