wonderful feel-good film

Rating: Null/10 (14 July 2001)

`Billy Elliot,' one of 2000's best films, is far more than just the typical coming-of-age story. It is a paean to all of us who have, at one time or another, felt ourselves to be `different' from society as a whole (and who among us, in moments of quiet honesty, would deny feeling this way at some time or other in our lives?). `Billy Elliot' takes us back to that time in our lives  early adolescence - when we are just beginning to experience the manifold wonders of the world, when we are just beginning to explore those things which makes us feel good, and when we are just starting that long process of self-discovery that will ultimately define who we are and what we love. Such a journey can be an easy one if, for instance, that thing that we choose to love happens to be socially acceptable  i.e. football for boys or cooking for girls  but what if it isn't? What if, say, the focus of attention for a young boy growing up in a poor English mining town happens to be ballet dancing? Then growing up and staying true to oneself suddenly become all that more challenging. If for no other reason, `Billy Elliot' deserves credit for tackling and illuminating the tricky and sometimes uncomfortable subject of adolescent gender-bending.
Billy is an 11-year old boy whose life provides little opportunity for warmth or joy. His father and brother are striking miners, his beloved mother has recently passed away and his maternal grandmother struggles with the disorientation that comes with advancing senility. The one ray of light in Billy's otherwise drab, humorless life is his fascination with the ballet class that meets in the same gym where he is supposed to be receiving his boxing lessons. One of the great joys of `Billy Elliot' comes in these early scenes as we see Billy going to enormous lengths to hide the truth of his activities, secreting his dancing shoes under his mattress or inside his trousers or absconding with a book on dancing from a local book mobile etc. Who among us can fail to identify with this sense that, if others discovered what we REALLY loved, we would quickly become a pariah, a misfit, an outcast? Haven't we all, at some time or other, secretly hidden objects that meant the world to us but that others just wouldn't understand if they saw we had them? Well, `Billy Elliot' reminds us that it is okay to be different, that indeed pursuing our goal  whatever it is  is the single most important step to achieving personal happiness.
In terms of plotting, there is not really much that is new here. The conflict-ridden lower class family, the recently dead mother, the feisty, sympathetic teacher who places all her faith in her young pupil, the initial reluctance on the part of the family and the community to accept Billy's dream and their ultimately yielding to his wishes  these are all elements we have seen in films before. Yet, somehow, `Billy Elliot' never seems clichéd or derivative, partly because writer Lee Hall and director Stephen Daldry get the details of character and setting so right and partly because Jamie Bell delivers such a luminous, naturalistic performance as Billy. Thanks to Bell's subtle underplaying, Billy never comes across as precious or precocious. He is just an ordinary kid with an extraordinary gift who is not afraid to ultimately stand up and defend his own originality. As the ballet instructor, Julie Walters conveys just the right combination of firm determination and openhearted compassion to make her a believable inspiration to her young charge. Gary Lewis, Jamie Draven and Jean Heywood are all excellent as Billy's father, brother and grandmother respectively.

The term `feel good movie' is often the kiss of death when it comes to encouraging the less sentimentally inclined among us to check out a film. But `Billy Elliot' really is a movie that could serve a salutary purpose. If it inspires even one parent to allow a child to fulfill his or her dream  regardless of what it happens to be  it may be one of those rare films that actually does some good in the world. Not bad for a little independent charmer like this one.