The Innocent Fury of Adolescent Drama

IF 13-year-old Jamie Miller in Philip Barantini's celebrated Netflix series Adolescence had a soul brother; it could well be the soon-to-turn-16 Liam in Ken Loach's Sweet Sixteen (2002) and, well before that, the 15-year-old Billy Casper in his 1969 masterpiece Kes.

- NAMRATA JOSHI

All three adolescents have one significant thing in common: their roots in the working class that was disempowered back then and has perhaps been pushed even farther to the margins now. None of them can quite escape how his place in the social stratum defines and confines his life and fosters a profound restlessness and bottomless angst. The world of social and economic inequities fuels an inner rage, which is as much their own as it is an inheritance down the generations and takes shape in the lap of families that are far from perfect.

Billy finds a speck of hope in falconry and the possibility of a vocation that the education system would otherwise deny him, but it's all too short-lived an option as the future remains a question mark. Having dropped out of school, Liam drifts aimlessly, selling untaxed cigarettes and illegal drugs, dreaming of starting life afresh in a caravan with his jailed mother once she gets released, little realizing that his 16th birthday implies that he can now be tried as an adult for his crimes and misdemeanors. The caravan, like Billy's falconry, remains an illusion—very near and yet so far.