Billy Elliot
**1/2
Rated on a 4-star
scale
Screening venue: Warner Vilage (Birkenhead Conway Park)
Released in the UK by UIP on September 29, 2000; certificate 15; 110 minutes;
country of origin UK; aspect ratio 1.85:1
Directed by Stephen Daldry; produced by
Greg Brenman, Jon Finn.
Written by Lee Hall.
Photographed by Brian Tufano; edited by John
Wilson.
CAST.....
Jamie Bell..... Billy
Gary Lewis..... Dad
Julie Walters..... Mrs Wilkinson
Jamie Draven..... Tony
Stuart Wells..... Michael
Nicola Blackwell..... Debbie
Before the days of home video, people remembered
their favourite cinema experiences by buying 8mm reels of 'selected scenes'.
I thought of those upon leaving "Billy Elliot", which is a
collection of engaging, beautifully acted moments floating around without
a point. I started out really liking this movie, got the tiniest bit impatient
as it proceeded disjointedly, and near the end wound up scratching my head,
as I realised that its threads just weren't gonna come
together.
The film takes place in Country Durham, 1984.
Billy (Jamie Bell) is a working-class 11-year old whose father and brother
are involved in the miners' strike and strapped for cash. Their only spare
fifty-pence pieces go to Jamie's boxing classes, which he fobs off early
in the film in favour of ballet lessons. He's got talent as a dancer, so
the instructor, Mrs Wilkinson (Julie Walters), encourages him to audition
for the Royal Ballet School.
Father and brother do not approve; they see ballet
as an opportunity for the family to lose face in their hard-as-nails masculine
community. Billy's effeminate chum Michael (Stuart Wells) disagrees. Billy
continues to see Mrs Wilkinson in secret. The film cuts between these strands
but never brings them together. It's bitty. We understand Billy's emotions
in every scene, but never get an overview of who he is. Yesterday I saw a
television interview with Jamie Bell speculating "He's probably a kid who
isn't really interested in school" -- for Christ's sake, shouldn't he
know? Why does the movie not have a single shot in school? The plot
moves along but the themes are unfocused. If it had been an hour longer,
and explored all its avenues in more detail, "Billy Elliot" might have become
a great picture.
I'm going to keep on about this, because I'm
frustrated. Is the movie about life during hard times? Following dreams?
The way we relate to people during childhood? All these bases are touched,
none of them take precedence. The screenplay doesn't even have reason to
be set during the miners' strike -- it doesn't examine the politics of the
situation, doesn't put it in a wider context, and it isn't there to show
how Billy escapes the poverty trap his elders are stuck in, because with
the pits closing down, he wouldn't have been able to grow up to be a miner
anyway.
"Billy Elliot" is well-made and involving. Despite
the ad campaign, the feel-good breakthroughs the character makes and the
grim-up-North setting, it's not a broad crowd-pleasing comedy that goes for
cheap humour or attempts to rip off "The Full Monty". It's a slow, thoughtful
drama, with sweet touches of wit, and a performance of quiet honesty by Bell.
I cared about Billy because he's a believable kid who comes from a miserable
background and sees his chance to get out -- I just wish I could feel that
I'd been told his whole story, or I could figure out what it all
meant.
COPYRIGHT© 2000 Ian
Waldron-Mantgani
2000 Reviews
(alphabetical)
2000 Reviews (by star
rating)
Archive of all cinema reviews
(alphabetical)
Review Archive
Index
UK
Critic main page
|
![[Image]](http://www.ukcritic.com/posbanr2.gif)