Jump to content

Billy Elliot

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 82.194.62.22 (talk) at 15:07, 6 February 2007 (→Plot). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

For other uses, see Billy Elliot (disambiguation).
Billy Elliot
Directed byStephen Daldry
Written byLee Hall
Produced byCharles Brand
StarringJamie Bell
Gary Lewis
Jamie Draven
Julie Walters
CinematographyBrian Tufano
Edited byJohn Wilson
Music byWayne Hector
Stephen Warbeck
Distributed byBBC films
Release date
3 October 2000 USA
Running time
111 min
CountriesSet in County Durham, England
LanguageEnglish

Billy Elliot is a 2000 film written by Lee Hall and directed by Stephen Daldry. Set in the fictional town of 'Everington' (assumed to be Easington) in the real County Durham, it stars Jamie Bell as 11 year old Billy, an aspiring dancer, Gary Lewis as his coal miner father, Jamie Draven as Billy's older brother, and Julie Walters as his dance instructor.

  • Tagline: Inside every one of us is a special talent waiting to come out. The trick is finding it.

Plot

Template:Spoiler Billy's mother had died when Billy was younger, and his father, an admirer of real life world boxing champion Ken Buchanan, has dreams that Billy could help the family out of their economic situation by becoming a boxer. Billy, however, is more interested in music, a passion he inherited from his late mother, and he sometimes plays her piano when he feels he needs her by his side.

Billy is taken to the boxing gym by his father, but he finds out that he doesn't really like the idea of boxing once he steps into the ring for the first time. One day, he discovers that part of the boxing gym is used by a ballet school. He seeks the dance instructor's help and secretly starts taking ballet class.

The plot is set against the backdrop of the 1984 miners' strike. When the miners of County Durham, including Billy's father and brother, go on strike, their economic situation grows worse. The family and their small town in general suffer many confrontations with the police, and Billy discovers that his best friend, Michael, is a gay cross-dresser when he confesses his love for Billy.

As a consequence of the riots, Billy has to miss several days of dancing school, and his teacher, not knowing that Billy kept the classes secret from his family, goes to his house and tells his father that he had missed an important audition for the Royal Ballet School. Upon finding out about Billy taking ballet class, Billy's father and brother become enraged and start expressing some views that could be interpreted as both machista and homophobic. But Billy proves to be determined and keeps on dancing with every chance he gets.

Having seen Billy dance for the first time, his father realizes that dancing might be his son's future, and he decides to take him to an audition in London himself. Billy has never been far from his home town, and he and his father are awestruck by the size of London. The school fees are paid for by selling as many valubles as the local community can find and Billy feels that the audition went badly; frustrated at these two facts Billy starts a fight with a boy from a rich background, but is still accepted by the ballet school because of the situation and the strength of his commitment to dancing.

The movie concludes with a scene that takes place in the present day, where his father and brother are sitting at the ballet concert waiting for Billy's performance to begin. They find themselves sitting next to Michael, who is there with his boyfriend to see Billy perform in Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake. The film ends as he takes the stage in a final leap. Template:Endspoiler

Awards and nominations

2000

2001

In 2004, the magazine Total Film named Billy Elliot the 39th greatest British film of all time.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack includes several well-known rock and punk rock songs:

Trivia

  • Jamie Bell had taken dance classes since he was six and he was ridiculed by his classmates in secondary school because of his dancing. Bell said he used that experience of being made fun for his character in the movie seeing how he could relate to Billy.
  • Worldwide, the film grossed near $110m.
  • Set against the backdrop of the 1984-1985 miners' strike, filming for the movie took place in Seaham and Easington Colliery, both mining towns of the East Durham coalfield. However as a result of the strike, both towns had lost all of their coal mines by the early 1990s, so the crew had to travel to Ellington, in Northumberland, to find an operational pit to use for filming in 1999-2000.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Billy_Elliot&oldid=106060149"