Glorious 'Billy Elliot', a boy with a soaring spirit

By Joko E.H. Anwar

Billy Elliot; Drama, 110 minutes; Starring Jamie Bell, Julie Walters, Gary Lewis, Jamie Draven.; Directed by Stephen Daldry; An Art Council of England/BBC/Studio Canal/Tiger Aspect/WT2/Working Title Films Production

JAKARTA (JP): Once in a while, going to a film theater is so enormously rewarding it feels like it is worth every rupiah and every second of your precious time.

Once in a while, there is a movie which emotionally draws the audience into the film and genuinely makes them experience what the film's characters are going through.

Billy Elliot is one of those magical movie moments.

The film, which tells the story of a miner's son who only wants to dance ballet, is an extraordinary cinematic achievement which people will likely want to experience more than once.

Set during the Thatcher 1980s, the film captures the depressed life of a coal-mining town in northern England.

There is a mass strike going on and the "scabs" who decide to work have to take an armored bus heavily guarded by the police.

Even without the strike, the town is already a trap and 11- year-old Billy Elliot (Bell) is a boy who understands the confines of his life.

His mother is dead and he lives with his widower father and a tough older brother, both of whom are taking part in the strike.

When he is not at school, Billy also has to watch over his senile grandmother, making sure that she does not walk out of her room and end up somewhere in town.

Knowing the gritty life that Billy will eventually have to face, his father makes him take boxing lessons at the local gym.

Nobody knows at the beginning that little Billy may just have a key to escape from his dingy surrounding. For he likes to dance -- he does not know why, he just does.

One day at boxing practice, he sees a group of little girls who share the gym for ballet lessons from an unlikely teacher, Mrs. Wilkinson (Walters).

He is fascinated by the dance and ends up using the money for the boxing lessons for the dance class.

A great scene is when he runs along the street after his father and his brother forbid him from attending ballet lessons.

He turns every movement into dancing and expresses his anger through this. Magically, the audiences feel the anger flowing out of his feet when he tap-dances on the road. The scene is electrifying.

There are brilliant performances all around, especially Bell, who was 12 when his debut film was shot. He is a natural dancer and actor, able to turn his everyday gestures into mesmerizing movements of dance. He does it on the street, around his house, everywhere.

In a difference from many Hollywood films which feature child actors to generate cutesy-wutesy moments, many British films use them for much stronger roles. Take Eamonn Owens' dazzling performance in Neil Jordan's The Butcher Boy or the child performers in Angela's Ashes.

Billy Elliot also boasts a great performance from another child actor, Stuart Wells, as Billy's best friend Michael.

Wells succeeds in playing the difficult character of a boy who always is there for his best friend but also is attracted to him. He is both mischievous and endearing.

Billy and Michael share the hard life of growing up in an imploding macho coal-mining world due to their natures, the former a ballet dancer and the other a boy struggling with his sexual orientation.

The adult actors are also mesmerizing, playing their characters of people disappointed with the world with astute accuracy.

Lewis as Billy's father is trapped by his own manhood. A miner all his life, he thinks that ballet dancing is just for "poofs", or sissies.

Walters portrays a woman with a shattered dream. She recognizes the great talent in Billy the first time she sees him trying to straighten his foot for the ballet movements.

She substitutes for Billy's mother and is willing to do anything to help the boy realize the dream which was beyond her reach.

Director Daldry is better known as an English stage director and this is his feature debut after numerous stage triumphs. The script by Lee Hall is boldly written and never surrenders itself to cheap melodrama.

Several elements in the film, including the strike, are hardly subplots as they work smoothly with the main story. The scene where the workers end their strike is particularly moving.

Billy Elliot is arguably the best film about dancing in years, surpassing Dancer in the Dark or the comic Strictly Ballroom.

Unlike many other winning films about dancing, Billy Elliot does not deal with a dancing competition where audiences are expected to cheer when the films' protagonist making his great last performance.

In fact, there is not a single scene in the film which wants the audience to cheer. When Billy achieves what he wants, the film quickly cuts to the smeared faces of the coal miners.

Even after the end credits roll, we feel we want to stay in our seat for awhile, as though the film has not ended. It continues, as life does.

You will not feel silly to laugh and you will not feel cheated to shed a tear or two. In short, this is a masterpiece which should not be missed.