A dream admist the struggle

Rating: 8/10 (25 June 2012)

It was the 1984-85 miners' strike in Britain. The miners were on strike throughout the country, including 11-year-old Billy Eilliot's (Jamie Bell) father Jackie (Gary Lewis) and older brother Tony (Jamie Draven). Billy also lives with his grandmother (Jean Heywood).
In the midst of the miners' strike, Jackie took his son Billy to boxing lessons. It was not what Billy wanted, and he one day chanced upon a ballet lesson going on nearby in the Sports Centre where he has his boxing lessons. Billy soon became interested in what he saw and initially took lessons secretly from whom will be his teacher in Sandra Wilkinson (Julie Walters) along with the other female ballet students in the class. It was something which Billy's grandmother would know about initially, as she talked about how she could have become a professional dancer herself in her younger days. Billy's father Jackie would come to know about the secret ballet lessons and he forbade his son from doing so. That did not stop Billy from taking lessons from Mrs. Wilkinson, which also intertwined with the miners' strike getting more violent and bloody.
It would be when Billy was supposed to attend an audition at the Royal Ballet School in London which Mrs. Wilkinson felt that Billy has the talent which put Billy's talent on a collision course with his father and especially his older brother. There was a skirmish between the police and the miners which Billy's older brother Tony got involved and saw Billy missed his audition in London. There would be a major confrontation at the Eilliot's residence when Mrs. Wilkinson visited the family where it would become over whether Billy should be allowed to become a professional ballet dancer.
It is quite a heart-warming and up-lifting film, of a young boy and his dream of wanting to be a ballet dancer and the obstacles he had to face along the way, considering of what was plaguing his family in the form of the miners' strike. The backdrop of the film which forms the basis also gives an insight of the struggle between the miners and the government of the day, for the non-British audience. Still, it is a film which gives hope to those who dare to chase their dream.