When we watch a movie, we usually slide from the previews to a studio promotion or advertisement of some sort and then to the music--whatever it is--that opens the feature presentation we have come to see. More often than not, we encounter pop songs used as overtures. We're used to it. And if you want to get our attention, you had better see to it that your opening pop song is one catchy little tune.
Billy Elliot does not open with a catchy little tune. It opens with silence. As the credits begin to roll, we notice that we are hearing nothing whatsoever. Something important could happen at any moment, something that we might need to see in order to understand the rest of the film. So we quit passing the popcorn bucket around and talking about what the annoying woman did yesterday at work and focus our attention on the screen.
It's all a trick, of course, to get us to pay attention to a lilting, meditative pop song--the kind of song that could never capture an audience's attention simply by being played loudly: T. Rex's "Cosmic Dancer." The reason the film insists on using silence to get our attention is presumably because director Stephen Daldry wants us to pay attention to the lyrics of this song:
I danced myself right out the womb
I danced myself right out the womb
Is it strange to dance so soon
I danced myself right out of the womb
But why are these lyrics so important? What does Daldry expect to accomplish by force feeding us this message so early?
In my view, Daldry understands how easy it is for movies about dancers (particularly young dancers) to become little more than forays into fascism. In films devoted to dance, we are accustomed to seeing dancers moving in unison, 'expressing themselves' according to the 'rules' of whatever form of dance they have been studying. There are many people who appreciate traditional Irish folk dancing (with the dancers' arms pinned rigidly to their sides) and ballroom dancing (with more rules about what the body is supposed to be doing at any given time than I can imagine remembering, much less incorporating into a dance routine). But there are also people like me. When I see ballroom dancers or ballet dancers or a traditional Irish folk dancer, I feel oppressed. All that synchronized whirling and twirling or rigid posturing just makes me sorry for the dancers, who only rarely look as if they're having any fun.
But Billy Elliot tries to remind us of what it means to dance for the joy of dancing, to dance because one is moved to dance, and not in order to get a high score from the judge in the corner who wants to see how many of the rules you've remembered. When Billy Elliot (Jamie Bell) is asked how he feels when he dances, he replies, "I sort of disappear." It is obviously a very satisfying disappearance that he experiences, the kind of disappearance that we all seek when we write or sing or lay brick or do whatever it is that makes a special and authentic kind of sense to us.
Billy Elliot is interesting if only because it understands the importance of speaking to the ordinary objections that are raised against dancing. To viewers such as myself, who find formal dancing fascistic, it says, "Ahh, but you have forgotten the joy of dance." To viewers who believe that most dancers, particularly since they have to start training so early, are merely the puppets of over-committed parents, it says, "Look, here's a boy who pursued ballet dancing despite his father's wishes." It goes further still, having Billy Elliot actually deliver the line, "I don't want a childhood; I wanna be a ballet dancer!" It even goes a little overboard in terms of anticipating objections by devoting too much time to the rather unnecessary argument that there are--gasp!--some heterosexual males who like formal dancing.
In other words, it sets itself apart from other movies about dancing by making a conscious effort to address the objections that most viewers bring to those other movies. But it does so within the context of a family portrait so hackneyed and unimaginative that even if it isn't exactly like the movies it so closely resembles, it is a carbon copy of films that it shouldn't have anything whatsoever to do with. Billy's father Jackie (Gary Lewis) expresses his contempt for dance by saying, "Lads do football or boxing or wrestling--not friggin' ballet." This line goes a long way towards helping us to understand the kind of struggle that Billy is going to have if he wants to pursue dance. We never could have guessed from his father's other actions and tantrums that this lifelong coal miner would see anything unmasculine in dancing.
However, Billy Elliot is not without occasional flashes of clever writing. I think we see a telling and realistic representation of an eleven-year-old's thought processes when Billy asks one of his friends, "Do ya think bein' a ballet dancer is better than bein' a miner?" And the one clever gag in the film occurs when Billy is walking with Debbie Wilkinson (Nicola Blackwell) down one of the streets of their striking mining town. The strike has brought in riot police who are blocking a sidestreet by standing shoulder-to-shoulder with their plastic shields at the ready. Young Debbie, carrying a stick that she has been bouncing against the walls of the buildings she passes, clicks the stick against one policeman's shield after another. The rigid posture of the police and their identical uniforms are reminiscent of what is most oppressive about synchronized dancing--only the police are involved in the rather less interesting activity of synchronized standing.
Although I'm not really sure why Billy Elliot ultimately demonstrates his ballet prowess by bursting into a tap number, I will say that I enjoyed the scene nevertheless--though that certainly had more to do with the scene's incorporation of The Jam's "A Town Called Malice" than any of the ungainly dancing done by the young Bell.
Though it won't be a revelation to anyone who has ever seen a film or read a book about the importance of pursuing one's dreams, Billy Elliot is somewhat more palatable than the average piece of cozy uplift.
The life of 11-year-old Billy Elliot (Jamie Bell), a coal-miner s son, is forever changed one day when he stumbles upon a ballet class during his week...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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