Print

 Email

Nicola Blackwell as Debbie Wilkinson and Jamie Bell as Billy Elliott

If you wonder if it’s possible for a film to reflect something substantive of a nation consider what Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane revealed of  depression-era America under the influence of a powerful and irresponsible media executive (1930′s William Randolph Hearst). Although very different films, separated by 60 years of history and several generations of movie  making technology, Stephen Daldry’s Billy Elliott (2000) turns a similar spotlight on modern day England.

London

Movies As Reflective Of Nation

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

Daldry Movies

Billy Elliott

Written By Lee Hall

Starring

Jamie Bell, Gary Lewis, Jamie Draven, Julie Waters

The Reader

Based on Novel By Bernhard Schlink

Starring

Kate Winslett Ralph Fiennes David Kross

Both pictures are now available on DVD and BluRay media.

Movies that tell us something important about the human condition are not generally a road to riches. Nor are films that insist on telling us about our national foibles, hidden secrets, or other unwanted realities. To the contrary, most movie-goers are attracted to concept movies such as James Cameron’s spectacular Avatar, and  its predecessors StarWars, Terminator and Jurassic Park.

Avatar As Money Engine

There is a place for  movies as extravaganzas marketed to young people aimed at filling seats, selling $10 popcorn and keeping Hollywood afloat on a sea of money. Cameron’s Avatar, which combines surrealistic visions of human experiences on a distant planet with three dimensional imaging and advanced animation techniques seems certain to be a blockbuster equal to, or possibly beyond the immense success of his last film, Titanic, which debuted twelve years ago.

Looking Into Ourselves

It remains to be seen if Avatar’s complex interactions between different species has anything of lasting value or insight to offer today’s movie goers, but this much is certain — money drives films. Blockbusters such as Avatar also fund films of lesser economic potential, including far smaller films that bring something more to the screen than violence, conquest, fantasy and mindlessness. In what are sometimes called human experience films, some of the very best movie makers take us to places within ourselves as individuals, as members of the human race, or even as nations.

Some people use the term chick flick to describe movies with intellect, substance, or meaning beyond mindless gratification. We rather prefer Jeff Slee’s term for films of substance, value, ethics, and humanity, the Human Condition, for in it he precisely identifies both subject and predicate.

Stephen Daldry

Human experience films are sometimes  reflective of nations, or cultures, or social orders, but  not always by intent. Two such films, Billy Elliott and The Reader, came from a single English director, Stephen Daldry. We are led to believe that Daldry’s decision to tell such powerful human experience stories was not entirely by accident.

Stephen Daldry’s production of The Reader ( Kate Winslett, Ralph Fiennes and David Kross ) told a complex story about nascent sexuality, the holocaust, German revulsion  in the aftermath of World War II. Before taking on The Reader ( 2008 ), Daldry’s earlier films were Eight ( 1998 ), Billy Elliott ( 2000 ), and The Hours ( 2002 ). In both The Reader and Billy Elliott, Daldry focuses on people caught up in events beyond their knowledge or understanding. Both movies are immensely engaging and entertaining, but equally reflective of national identities, both hidden and overt.

I did not see Stephen Daldry’s Billy Elliott during its American theatrical release ten years ago. I might not have seen it at all had it not been for the determination of Newsroom Magazine’s Richard Evans who arranged for showings of both films.  Daldry’s considerable experience at working with young actors — skills he developed ten years before making The Reader, while directing 11 year old Jamie Bell in Billy Elliott, have enabled him to tell stories from a perspective largely beyond what’s common in the movie genre.

Billy Elliott ( Jamie Bell ) In Flight

So, when I wrote about Daldry’s excellent directorial work in The Reader ( Story-Driven Movies — More Than Entertainment ) Richard Evans deftly added Daldry’s Billy Elliott to our summer movie offerings. I don’t know what it was about Billy Elliott that didn’t attract me ten years ago. To be sure, I’m not much interested in the problems of 11 year olds, having learned that being 11 is not only transitory, but largely preparatory for far more difficult years to follow.

Human Experience Films

Powerful stories about the wider human experience are not child’s play — for they demand more than passive watching. In one such film, Finding Forrester, director Gus Van Sant, reaffirms the importance of ideas, values and ethics through the words and deeds of Sean Connery portraying reclusive writer William Forrester. Through Forrester’s acceptance of Jamal Wallace ( played by Rob Brown ) Van Sant encourages his audience to think about prejudice, values, ideas, honor, love and integrity — which are  not common themes in most of today’s Hollywood movies.

In the hands of a skilled director human experience movies cut through the fog of life more effectively than any other media.

Whether a human experience film arises out of the slums of India, the coalfields of England, the boardrooms of business, or the rural expanse of middle America, human experience stories reflect who we are as individuals, as a people — even a nation.

Human experience films tell us something useful about human challenges, capabilities and behavior. But there is far more about humanity than one individual’s paths through life. While James Cameron, George Lucas and Steven Speilberg choose to focus on stories of immense scope and scant values, other A list directors including George Clooney, Clint Eastwood and Stephen Daldry knowingly and intentionally choose to tell stories about people caught up in events and times not fully understood.

Movies As Reflector Of Society

If you wonder if it’s possible for a film to reflect something substantive of a nation consider what Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane revealed of  depression-era America under the influence of a powerful and irresponsible media executive ( 1930′s William Randolph Hearst ). Although very different films, separated by 60 years of history and several generations of movie  making technology, Stephen Daldry’s Billy Elliott ( 2000 ) turns a similar spotlight on modern day England. This time the causal factor is not an individual, but a once mighty nation largely pre-occupied by being at war with itself.

Whether one sees Billy Elliott as reflective of Britain in ways similar to how Citizen Kane reflected depression-era America depends, to some degree, on which Britain it is compared. Daldry filmed Billy Elliott, a full decade before Britain’s  near-collapse at the hands of reckless international finance institutions.

Billy Elliott’s Britain is angry over unwanted changes, unwanted immigrants, and centuries old hatreds.  No one in Lee Hall’s screenplay knew of 911,  Iraq, the Afghanistan war, or the unpleasantness arising from MPs raiding the public treasury for their personal use.

Billy Elliott Soars

Jamie Bell as Billy Elliott -- Reflections Of Nation, Culture, Era

On the surface, Daldry’s movie  is about the travails of Billy Elliott ( Jamie Bell ), an 11 year old boy who discovers dance. In the title role, Jamie Bell is both innocent and cunning  — as befits a bewildered boy on the cusp of manhood. But Billly is equally engaging by his confidence in himself and by what Daldry tells us of his emerging personality. One best take care that Jamie Bell’s Billy Elliot not charm you into adopting him which is largely what Daldry had to do to keep movie and Bell moving forward as one.

There are complications, of course, given that Billy Elliott is being raised in county Durham’s  coal mining district, that his father and older brother are miners, that his mother is deceased. Then there’s the elephant in every scene — Billy’ is attracted to formal dance, or as his father  sees it, sissy ballet. While there is some appeal in such a story, it takes on new meaning when it is set against the values and thinking commonplace in England at the end of the 20th century.

Billy Elliott finds himself having to deal with a complicated society, not unlike America’s, sometimes cohesive but often at war with itself. The adult characters surrounding Billy Elliott are scared, depressed, largely uneducated and narrow minded to the point of exasperation. The Scots are distrustful, the Irish trashy drunks, real men do real work, only gays ( poofers ) engage in the arts, the moneyed establishment is ruthless, the union a brotherhood, the happenings in the far away capital ( London ) of little interest and less consequence. If there is a stereotypical lower class cliche, Lee Hall hits it hard. Even young Billy is suspicious of his demanding ballet teacher ( Julie Waters ) for having impure thoughts about him.

What Stephen Daldry delivers is uplifting, reassuring, and in some ways anti-stereotypical. Billy earns the right to attend the Royal Ballet School — a transcendental event for both he and his miner father — even as the miners are horribly repressed, their union nearly destroyed, all of which goes largely ignored by an upper class establishment that sees its prerogatives as royal in origin, if not exactly divinely God given.

I am led to believe, through ongoing discussions with Newsroom Magazine correspondent Tony Koorlander, that today’s Britain is sadder but wiser. Maybe so, for the same might be said by Americans assembling in the streets to protest the misdeeds of bankers, regulators and the Congress. Clearly the revolutionary feelings being felt in the U.S. and Britain today are evidence of nations more attuned to the failings of the rich and powerful.

While we don’t know how or when the world’s financial discolorations will be fully resolved, we do know that Daldry’s film, and Lee Hall’s story, are timeless, non-political, and immensely entertaining. For the life of at least one fictional 11 year old boy has caught, and maintained the attention of the world beyond the coal fields, or the British empire.

Bravo.

Richard Evans contributed to this essay.

From Movie To Broadway Musical

After Billy Elliott’s theatrical release, Melvin Burgess novelized Lee Hall’s screenplay. Four years later, Burgess’ novel version was adapted for the stage as Billy Elliot the Musical.

With a musical score and songs by Sir Elton John, the musical opened in Australia in 2007. A year later it was in production on Broadway.

Today Billy Elliott The Musical is a smash hit on Broadway.

Not bad for a human experience film about a small boy finding his place in a complicated world.