68%User score 68 percent
The Cement Garden
1993 · Drama
User Score
454 votes
They beat him. They deprived him. They ridiculed him. They broke his heart. But they couldn’t break his spirit.
Bullied at school and ignored and abused at home by his indifferent mother and older brother, Billy Casper, a 15-year-old working-class Yorkshire boy, tames and trains his pet kestrel falcon whom he names Kes. Helped and encouraged by his English teacher and his fellow students, Billy finally finds a positive purpose to his unhappy existence.
Recommendations based on this film
CinemaSerf
June 9, 2026
When I think back to my childhood, this is one of the few films that I ever saw that induced some sort of emotional reaction. It was it's last five minutes that achieved that, but building up to this denouement we watch the antics of the amiable working class lad "Billy" (David Bradley). He lives with his mum (Lynne Perrie) and his older, bullying, brother "Jud" (Freddie Fletcher) on a bit of a shoestring and is larg…
Read the full review on TMDBReviews are written by the TMDB community, not by Kes's publisher.
