Billy Elliot Review

BILLY ELLIOT

Billy Elliot, a typical film which I’ve not seen yet. My mom used to say it was a really nice film to see and I just used to think it was the classical crying film. Yes, that’s right, that’s how it was.

I sat on the classroom desk disposed to spend two hours of a (more or less) boring film to then, write a compulsory review for homework. My prospects didn’t change as the film started with a boy dancing and a background music; ‘A boring musical film too!?’ I tutted.

But once it started with the north England ambience, set on the miner’s strike of 1984, it caught my attention.

The central character is an eleven-year-boy called Billy Elliot, whose mother has recently passed away. He lives with his father and old brother, both implicated on the miner’s strike that is taking place in their own city; and also lives with his grandmother with whom he has a very close relationship, he’s very attentive with her and looks after her; when she was young she also loved ballet, that’s why she’s one of the few persons who encourage him to dance.

Before start dancing, he used to go to boxing classes but he wasn’t really good at it; while he was in the course he looked at girls taking ballet classes out of the corner of his eye, until a day he decided to try. That day, he realized that it was made for him.

When his father saw him at ballet classes, he strictly locked him in at home. ‘That’s just for girls’, he said.  The poor Billy only had his teacher Ms. Wilkinson & his best friend Michael support (with whom he has a special relationship during all the film, with a homosexual tendency; a moral banned topic in that years.)

As the film goes on, his father realizes how good his son is and accepts bringing him (as his teacher recommended) to West End theatre where, because his circumstances and despite doing a quite bad debut, he’s accepted and  where many years later he will become a really successful dancer.

There are two ‘technical’ things that should be highlightened:  One is the vocabulary used by the characters through which it is showed their limited education and are characterized; words such: Divven’t, Piss off, ‘Dunno > =don’t know’, ‘cas > ‘because’. Phrases like: ‘You don’t get owt for nowt’; etc.

And the other one is the music used (T-Rex, David Bowie ,...), classified on the ‘glam’  tendency which  played with the sexual ambiguity on its aesthetic.

In general, the film deals with two kinds of struggle: the collective one represented by the miners and the personal one represented by Billy. And it also stimulates two ambiances: a harsh reality and a childlike innocent ambiance respectively.

I started to see the film with lack of interest and finally it made me cry.
This is an absolutely poignant and touching film. I highly recommend it.