Retrospective Film Review

Billy Elliot (2000) • 20 Years Later

A talented young boy becomes torn between his unexpected love of dance and the disintegration of his family.

Superficially, Stephen Daldry’s Billy Elliot stands in the grand tradition of works that wallow in misery to make us feel good, running from Oliver Twist to Angela’s Ashes and beyond. It could easily have been a piece of maudlin emotional exploitation. And it comes close occasionally, notably when a dead mother’s prized piano is smashed up for firewood to provide a little heat at Christmas.

But Billy Elliot never once tips over that brink, thanks not only to Lee Hall’s razor-sharp script (adapting his own play Dancer) and Daldry’s direction but also the performances of the four main actors, all of whom invest their characters with depth and humanity that’s often just glimpsed on-screen rather than wheeled out for all to weep over.