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Billy Elliot
Charm vs. glitz, rough edges vs. too-smooth textures, visual poetry vs. cliche. What am i talking about here? Foreign movies vs. Hollywood crap, of course.
Sure, it's not such a black and white issue (god only knows that there are some hideous foreign flix out there) but if you want a breath of fresh air, movie-wise, run... no, dance your way to see Billy Elliot. And i'm not saying that everything Hollywood makes these days is terrible either, but you can always smell out a mainstream film by the way it's so well 'packaged,' so predictable, so thoroughly formulaic. So shiny. Sure, there's also formula in this British movie, and some cliched cinematography to boot -- slow-motion shots; gauzy, smoky scenes, etc.; and some awful over-acting at times -- but it undoubtedly has a rough charm and humor that stamps it as "foreign." Plus, there are bits of dialogue in the Northern English dialect that are just impenetrable because of the accent (and the use of distinctly non-American english words), which makes it all the more engaging.
Speaking of Northern England, guess where the movie is filmed: Durham! The observant weblog reader will immediately note that this is where my friend and colleague Candace, a.k.a. Chere Prudence, is at the very moment, having left wild California to spend a study year in ancient Britain. Imagine my delight when, as the film opens, I see that it's taking place in a coal-mining area in Durham. Most of the scenes are shot indoors, but there's enough outdoor scenes to give me a sense of the place where Candace is at right now.
 The boy is preparing breakfast for his grandmother: juggling hot, just-boiled eggs onto two egg-holders on a tray, balancing a teakettle, and, with a dish catching pieces of toast that pop up three feet in the air. His kinetic movements in the small kitchen are a kind of dance, and jitterbug music fills the background score. His hands otherwise preoccupied with carrying the large tray, he slides open the door with his head, only to see his gramma's room empty, as, in her senility, she has wandered outside to the yard. He goes outside to lead her back indoors, in a kind of dance, too.
It's a very 'physical' movie, as befits one about dance. Lest you think it's all just music and lightness, think again. Scenes of the striking miners--of which Billy's dad and brother are a part; a piano being axed to provide some warmth for a sad Christmas dinner; the harsh landscape of an industrial mining town; all are juxtaposed against the story of a boy who finds that dance is life and that to live is to dance.
The scenes of Billy dancing, or just walking and running through the streets of Durham town, keenly reminded me of watching the just-concluded Olympics: moments of human physical endeavor of the highest order. In one scene, the boy tells an auditionist at the Royal Ballet that when he dances, he completely loses himself to a kind of fire inside of him. I imagine that's what happens with athletes too, when they're performing... be it a 50-meter swim sprint, a 400-meter dash, the punctuated flailing of sabres at the apex of a fencing match, or the balletic exertions of a floor exercise in gymnastics.
The "poofery" issue inherent in the flick, i.e. the argument that "boys don't dance, they play football!" was very well handled, indeed. You can imagine the machismo inherent in the character of Billy's miner dad who is a widower, and in his older brother, also a rough-and-tough miner. A hilariously sad, telling scene happens in the boys' bedroom at night when Billy, thinking about his dead mother, asks his brother: "do you ever wonder about death?" and the guy just turns over with a brusque, "go fuck off!" as he has more important things in his mind, like how to deal with scabs the next morning as the miners continue their strike. And then the scene in which Billy's dad finally sees the talent in his son, as the boy dances for his father in an empty boxing gym as if his very life depended on it, is just magical. (The director should have chosen not to have had any background music, though; that was trite. It would have been more powerful were Billy just dancing in silence, to the music inside him. Just as his father would have seen him in that quiet space.)
Anyway, I shan't ruin the movie any more for you. Just go see it, if it comes to your burb (or if not, travel to the nearest big city to see it, with a favorite adult in hand). If you have dance and music in your soul, this little English crumpet will charm you, for sure.
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