‘Billy Elliot’ A Forced Cry
Watching “Billy Elliot” is like a first date in which the other person periodically asks, “Do you love me yet? Do you love me?”
“Billy Elliot” veers wildly from scenes that are genuinely touching to others that pour it on so thick that crying feels obligatory. Billy is a working-class English kid whose dad wants him to box but who discovers he has a gift for ballet (or “bolly,” as he pronounces it). Jamie Bell, who plays Billy, has mischievousness and artistry in him, so it’s a thrill watching him enact Billy’s realization that when he moves his feet, he can make something beautiful.
Bell is a find, and his scenes with Julie Walters, playing the too-tiny role of his crabby dance instructor, are swell. But the movie pours on scenes of Billy fighting with his uptight dad and of dad trying to figure out how to feed his family while he’s on strike and of Billy’s dead mom showing up to give advice — scenes so manipulative and phony (could there be a more obvious image of killing beauty in order to survive than the one in which Billy’s dad busts apart a piano for firewood?) that our response is unnecessary. Why should we emote when the characters are doing so much emoting themselves?
The dance metaphor is pushy, too. We’re shown the contrast between the ugliness of scabs taking Mr. Elliot’s union job and the beauty of Billy en pointe — the contrast between strikebreaking and Swan Laking — but there’s no meaning behind the juxtaposition of these images.
And the idea that, when he’s angry and frustrated, Billy erupts in paroxysms of dance doesn’t work at all. His anger and frustration are too beautifully choreographed, too neat, too “Flashdance.”
I’d argue that “Billy” is a much shallower film than “Flashdance.” That movie knew it was just dumb fun, but “Billy” pretends to have something to say about painful, difficult issues and then resolves them all neatly, with time to spare for a dance finale that, typically, doesn’t give the last word to the inherent beauty of dance but to the corny reactions of a couple of lunkheads watching it.
That’s when you realize the condescension behind “Billy.” Director Stephen Daldry puts those lunkheads in the final scene because he thinks we won’t appreciate ballet unless we see it through the eyes of a “common person.”
In Daldry’s eyes, those lunkheads are us.
This sidebar appeared with the story: “Billy Elliot”
Locations: River Park Square Cinemas
Credits: Directed by Stephen Daldry, starring Julie Walters, Jamie Bell, Jamie Draven, Gary Lewis, Jean Heywood
Running time: 1:50
Rating: R