BILLY ELLIOT -- Stephen Daldry, dir

©2000
studio: Universal Studios
production company: Arts Council of England, BBC Films, Studio Canal, Tiger Aspect Productions, WT2 Productions, Working Title Films
dir: Stephen Daldry
cast: Jamie Bell, Jean Heywood, Jamie Draven, Gary Lewis, Stuart Wells, Mike Elliot, Billy Fane, Nicola Blackwell, Julie Wlaters, Carol McGuigan
screenplay: Lee Hall

A talented young boy becomes torn between his unexpected love of dance and the disintegration of his family.

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This is a wonderful, heart-warming and heart-wrenching film. The set-up of the characters and their situation is flawless. It is easy to empathize with the struggle that Billy (Jamie Bell) is going through, and even though his tough, miner father might appear to be a bit hard on the family, we see easily, and understand his own pain (somehow, as he chops up his deceased wife's piano for kindling to keep the family warm at Christmas, he remains stoic, but we manage to see how it hurts him inside).

Once the father sees that his son indeed has talent, he, a leading force behind the miners striking, hires on as a scab to make the money to keep his family going. For only a second I wondered why he'd scab at something he was fighting against, but I saw through to the fact that mining was the only thing this man (and his elder son) have ever known.

The dancing was wonderfully filmed. Never performed flawlessly, but most certainly with passion ... the passion of a young boy who can't imagine doing anything BUT dance. It shows, and it works.

I think that the least effective moments in the film are when Billy spends time with his friend who we learn is gay, and expects that Billy, because he likes to dance, is also gay. It felt that the moments where there only to let the audience know that Billy is NOT gay ... that boys can dance and NOT be gay. It felt didactic and unnecessary (though perhaps only unnecessary to me as a father of boys who dance -- perhaps they did need to tell people that the father, and their own perceptions, are not true).

I wanted the film to be more about Billy himself and to see more of the dancing (there was plenty), but it is about the family, and the effect that the striking miners has on the family and Billy, is essential to the greater story.

This is a film worth seeing!