Content area
Full text
hrough the journey of its eponymous protagonist, Billy Elliot (Stephen Daldry, 2000) explores the harsh possibili- ties of the industrial world and the struggle for hope, freedom and acceptance. Conflict arises as Billy (Jamie Bell), a young boy who wants to be a ballet dancer, chal- lenges the predetermined assumptions of the society he grows up in; the film links self-acceptance with the struggle for acceptance from others. The film uses motifs of landscape, movement and music to construct notions of self and it symbolically conveys how a final understanding of self is facilitated through relationships. The underlying message of Billy Elliot is a positive one: if we believe in ourselves strongly enough, then nothing can hinder our capacity to succeed.
Landscapes of hope and entrapment
The harsh industrial and urban landscape of Billy Elliot does more than merely provide a backdrop for the events of the film. The métonymie function of the fictional British mining town of Everington is to convey masculinity and hardship. Here landscape is used to demonstrate how our natural and physical environment shape and inform personal responses. The characters are products of the values and beliefs manifested in the world that surrounds them. Daldry wants the viewer to understand that this myopic setting, beyond which Billy's father, Jackie (Gary Lewis), has never ventured, is a cloistered world of limited definitions of self. The roles of men and women in this society reflect the mining town culture of which they are a part. The restrictive setting of Everington makes it difficult to transcend these definitions and thus Billy must move outside this environment in order to achieve his dream of becoming a ballet dancer.
Landscape is further used in the film to explore the ideas of hope, freedom and destiny. The recurring image of the green and lush graveyard is used in the foreground to contrast the dark and ominous mines that command the background of many scenes. These images represent the fate of the characters in the film and the notion that they are trapped by the ideological values and expectations of society. Ironically the graveyard also represents hope for Billy through the guiding force of his dead mother. This hope is further reinforced by the recurring image of...