Member review

Billy Elliot follows a young boy, his aspiration of ballet and how he deals with his father’s disapproval. The movie provides an accurate depiction of the arduous life as a young child in a lower class, disdained society. It’s set throughout the 1984-85 coal miner’s strike and displays the difficult impacts it had on the society. This melancholic aspect illuminates and contrasts effectively with the joy Billy has when dancing. As a result, depicting the immensity of his passion.

I enjoyed watching the character development as all prominent experiences they have, whether sombre or bliss are prevailing through their personality. For example Billy’s father is grieving the loss of his wife therefore, he’s developed a resistance against happiness in fear it will be taken away again. This is shown through his traditional yet constituted enmity against Billy dancing ballet. This movie can be viewed as an inspiration as it portrays the ability to do anything despite gender, economical class and age and constructs a plot against stereotypes. This is especially striking as it was set through a time of a less acceptive and more restrictive society.

One aspect of the movie I didn’t enjoy was the consistent use of long, niche music with no dialogue, this created a cliché atmosphere of hackneyed scenes due tedious repetition of lengthy music. An example of this is when Billy arrives from class and dances in his room along with pop music to contrast with his formal, effusive dance style. This contrasts effectively and symbolises Billy’s more modern and advanced mindset. However, this is shortly followed with repeated style through a timeline of his week paired with similar music and time effects. This feels repetitive and can cause the audience to experience a sense of apathetic resistance against the uncreative scene form. Overall, I rate this movie a 3/5 as I felt a sense of rush and lack of depth with numerous characters and would have enjoyed to watch some retrospective aspects such as analepsis to gain clarity on the overall message and meaning.

The scenes move quickly yet have little climax throughout the first half of the movie. However when transitioning gradually through the second half, you can sense the movie gaining confidence and there’s an increase in climax once the ending plot-line is revealed. The tense journey to London, where Billy and his father have an interview for the Royal school of ballet admissions panel, is executed with nuances of shame yet pride and convoluted yet good intentions.The use of a perepetia to construct the denouement rounds off the movie well. In this perspective of life, happy endings are possible, but it takes a challenge of calamity, a change of view and time to accept people for themselves.