For me, feeling good isn’t about escape, it’s about confrontation. Staring the thing you truly care about in the eye and giving in to it. It’s about empowerment, courage, optimism. I’m a sucker for coming-of-age films, the idea of striving to be the person you want to be despite the circumstances around you, and no film hits home for me like Billy Elliot.
The low-budget drama danced its way through cinema projectors and on to the screen in September 2000, a few weeks after my fourth birthday. The film, set in County Durham in 1984, focuses on Billy (played by Jamie Bell), the younger brother of Tony, who is part of the miners’ strike, alongside his father, Jackie, who is a widower. Billy is 11 and a reluctant boxer who finds himself drawn toward Sandra (Julie Walters) and her ballet classes, which are taking place in the boxing gym as their studio is being used to feed the striking miners. He knows these dreams are not for young men like him, and is petrified of how his older brother and father will respond to his newfound passion, but the chain-smoking Sandra sees a natural aptitude (and above all determination) in Billy and helps him to audition for the Royal Ballet School in London.
I relate to Billy a lot: I grew up in a working-class part of south Wales, and my artistic instincts were contrary to the idea of what it means to be a man there. I should make clear, there’s a misconception that Billy Elliot is a film about queerness. Billy’s best friend, Michael Caffrey, confides in Billy about his homosexuality and enjoyment for wearing feminine clothing, but Billy is heterosexual.
More broadly, the film is about having the courage to be the person you want to be, by breaking away from class or societal convention, expressing yourself truly, not expressing yourself merely as you’re expected to within the environment you are born. These elements are why the film means so much to me. I’m a cis-heteronormative guy, but I come from a background where being a writer, having artistic and academic inclinations, expressing myself through clothing, generally being in touch with emotion, writing songs and poems, are all viewed as a sort of queerness. As a 16-year-old wearing suspenders over a tucked-in polo shirt, Sta-prest trousers, loafers and vigorously washed off eyeliner walking into the rugby club, you can imagine the “banter” I was subjected to, which did in fact often skew homophobic at times, for no reason beyond ignorance.
And yet, I had a fairly loving childhood. Like Billy, if I have ever had to double down on being myself, even if I felt I had to move away to do so, support always far outweighed criticism (at least to my face). Especially from family, even if, like Jackie, they could be reluctant at first it was generally due to the security of their world, not a hatred for other ways of living. I’ve had nerve-racked family at the table waiting for my results, pacing the corridors as I conduct interviews; waiting in buildings bigger and more expensively decorated than anything they have experienced before to see if I have a chance to follow a dream.
It is a remarkable privilege, and one I am often grateful for to the point of shame. A sort of survivor guilt for those who may never have been given the chance to be whoever they want to be. Like Billy’s grandma. I don’t say that to suggest I should be applauded, I say it to mention that when I then see the society of the film reflect the same optimistic scenario, it overwhelms me, makes me well up and sob, and it reminds me that I am loved and that I am allowed to live this life however I choose.
This is probably why I come to the film most frequently in moments of life change. When I need to feel hugged by the world, I always look to the tough-loving chain-smoking Julie Walters, the young Jamie Bell tap-dancing on the tables, the nerve-racked family unit doing what they can to help their children. The movie lets me believe in myself. The movie lets me know I am so very loved, and that we should always strive for the life we want to live.
Billy Elliot is available to rent digitally in the US and UK and on Paramount+ and Binge in Australia
