Jamie Bell is a Gene Kelly of the 21st century

Rating: 9/10 (19 August 2001)

The hero's dream of becoming a ballet dancer is born in the unlikely milieu of County Durham's working class mining community. This impoverished population of broken dreams and domestic violence is the bleak alternative to, and thereby stimulant for, Billy Elliot's dream.
The action takes place, significantly, during a time of rebellion: the pit miners are on strike because of pit closures. This violent and brooding subplot is thematically linked to Billy Elliot's struggle against tyrannical sanctions: just as his brother and father resist police enforcement, so he stands up to them. His rebellion is no less masculine: he defies his father's prohibition and braves physical abuse when caught dancing, proving that Ballet is not just for Â‘poufs' but is a dignified profession for those of physical dedication, discipline and courage.
The director symbolically conveys the opposition between Billy's values and his father's through an opposition between darkness and light (the white of the swan is to become a symbol of Billy's ambition). The misery of parental failures is explored during a dark interior scene; yet the next scene, where Billy and his girlfriend cast away sorrows in an amorous play scene, is light and the feathers of the cushion as it splits fill the room with downy whiteness (a visual prelude to the swan's narrative introduction).

Overlooking the river Wear, Billy's teacher (Julie Walters at her gut-wrenching best) tells him the story of Swan Lake as Tchaikovsky's theme is playing in the background: a beautiful woman is turned into a swan by a wicked magician, but has a few hours every night to be her true self. This is an important moment for Billy, for he takes on the swan's story as a correlative for his own plight: like the swan he has a limitted time set aside in his day (the dance classes) in which to express his true self.

Downy snow is falling like swan feathers in the Christmas scene and Billy is building a snow man with his friend; this is an image of hope and creativity(which is later urinated on by a drunken miner); rebuilding dreams as well as building the white snow man (Billy's friend is convincing him to try his luck at Ballet again). It is as if the universality of the snow and all it stands for gives Billy the confidence to re-assert his ambition, for when his father catches him this time, he is not so passive. He gives a muscular virile, even acrobatic, dance performance for his father in an awe-inspiring gesture of defiance.
Jamie Bell is a Gene Kelly of the 21st century: his moves are a mixture of tap, ballet, gymnastics and, at times, football manoeuvres! The scenes of tap dancing virtuosity across the lavatories, steps and railings of the brick back yards and along the streets and shed rooftops of Durham are as breathtaking as one of Gene Kelly's jubilant performances. Yet, with Billy Elliot, the aggression and awkwardness of the moves are emotionally justified: he is angry and is dancing from frustrated energy reserves. There is nothing staged about his dancing, or indeed any part of this film, for it is enthused throughout by the thwarted passion and stifled, if ultimately triumphant, genius of the hero's dream.