Dance of a working class hero
Billy Elliot (15) | Director: Stephen Daldry | Starring: Jamie Bell, Julie Walters, Gary Lewis, Jamie Draven | 111 Mins
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The Big Picture
It's 1984 - the miner's strike is on - and Billy (Jamie Bell), a whey-faced stripling from Durham, is still reeling from the death of his mother. Billy's father and brother (both on the picket-line), are too wound up for cuddles and his weekly boxing class is adding insult to injury.
Then one day Billy stumbles across ballet. As it turns out, he's a natural and dancing teacher, Mrs Wilkinson (Julie Walters) wants him to try for a place at the Royal Ballet School. But how can he think about auditions when his family are getting ever more deeply involved in the strike? And even if they did support him (which they won't, because they think only "poofs" like ballet), how could they afford to send him to London?
Despite, or perhaps because of, all the hype surrounding theatre man Stephen Daldry's directing début, it would be easy to take against Billy Elliot. Lee Hall's script gropes for heart-strings from the word go, providing, among other things, a dear old granny and a surprise appearance by Billy's ma, while the soundtrack is one of those ubiquitously jaunty affairs (T Rex, The Jam) that editors hope will cover over all dramatic cracks.
A series of "spontaneous" dances by Billy also grate - positively screaming "look kids! Ballet doesn't have to be stuffy!" They're the sort of moves a young Michael Clark might have come up with, but Billy isn't a Michael Clark type and - like the moments in musicals where characters suddenly break into song - it breeds mistrust. More seriously, the film flirts heavily with the Hollywood mantra that individuals are always more important than the group so that, mid-way through, you're bracing yourself for On The Waterfront, Part II.
Thank goodness, then, that its final message is a little more complicated and the strike scenes hair-raising for all the right reasons. Billy's non-reaction to the violence is equally impressive. What's captured is how self-absorbed kids can be - how reality trickles almost diagonally into their private space.
Another plus is the attention that's obviously been paid to the sets. Billy's undernourished house, for instance, is full of glowing yellows and blues and moving through it like having your head held under in an aquarium - beautiful, but you long to catch your breath. By contrast, Mrs Wilkinson's sitting-room couldn't be more solid. A turd-brown palace, it boasts many treasures, chief among them a full box of Ferrero Rocher chocolates. Another film might have invited us to laugh at such "wealth". Daldry makes us see it through Billy's eyes - with awe.
None of this would count for anything without the right cast. As it happens, they're near perfect. Bell has enough energy to set a wind-mill spinning, while Walters makes us believe in a character so droll she can't take her own loneliness seriously.
Gary Lewis, meanwhile, avoids all the dignity-under-pressure clichés as Billy's father. Thanks to Lewis, this man's meaty-shouldered swagger is obnoxious as well as pitiful, his integrity not something we can take for granted. Which, of course, renders his subsequent behaviour all the more heart-breaking.
The issue of Billy's sexuality is also nicely handled. Superficially at least, he's got room for only one desire. In fact, he's an ad-man's dream of a little boy: one who, faced by eager kisses, crosses his arms and will have none of it. But long-lashed, best-friend Michael, who's clearly more sophisticated (he and his dad are both into cross-dressing) brings something else to the mix. No explicit statements are made but the importance of Billy and Michael's relationship is never in doubt.
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An adult Michael is there at the film's close and you can read that any way you like. Whatever, it allows the actor playing him, through a mere blink of his big eyes, to remind us what it's like to grow up in a small town if you really are a "poof".
Determinedly mainstream, Billy Elliot doesn't push you anywhere you don't want to go. A strike, poverty, sexual awakening, joy... This is Lynne Ramsay's Ratcatcher with the i's dotted and t's crossed. In other words, it's as raw a slice of escapism as you could wish for.
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