Text/November Rain
Youth is throbbing, eager to express and express.
Dance is elegant and enthusiastic, carrying dreams and life.
There are not a few movies that describe adolescent children, but there are very few that are truly lifelike and amazing. Because this is a delicate age, with sensitive and delicate moods. If you simply use an adult's eyes to capture these details, it will become cliché if the depiction is not enough, and it will appear hypocritical if it is rendered too much. It is not easy to accurately grasp it. In my memory, there are three youth films with different styles that impressed me, Jiang Wen's "Sunny Days", the Mexican film "Your Mother Too" and the Taiwanese film "Blue Door". Although they both describe the throbbing of youth, the styles are indeed quite different. "Sunny Days" is Jiang Wen's reminiscence of his youth during the Cultural Revolution. The tone of the whole film is as bright as its title. The whole film of "Your Mother Too" is filled with a strong atmosphere of adolescent hormones. This film about the search fully reflects the unrestrained and passionate passion of Latin America. The freshness and timelessness of "The Blue Door" has made the best footnote to the youth in my heart.
Compared with the above three films, director Stephen Dauri's debut "Billy Elliott" is a typical British sketch. The director's delicate and splendid portrayal of the youth's psychology and sincere description of the relationship between father and son also make this work another rare masterpiece among the films describing youth. After the great success of his debut film in 2000, Stephen Dorry directed "The Moment" with many stars in 2002. This excellent film depicting women's psychology also brought Nicole · Kidman got the Oscar for Best Actress. The director's profound skills are evident in these two works.
11-year-old boy Billy Elliott, the son of a coal miner, has lived with his father and brother in a small town in the north of England since he was a child. He lost his mother when he was young, his father was short-tempered, his elder brother was domineering, and his old grandmother was sickly and needed his care. In such a family, the father and brother are also in danger of losing their jobs. The director arranged the background to be the British coal miners' strike in 1984. The miners chose to confront the government for their livelihood. Billy's brother and father were also among the activists, although some people have withdrawn from the strike one after another during the long-term confrontation. The team goes back to work, because the struggle is also based on being able to survive.
So we can also see that the father loves Billy, and the older brother also loves Billy, but under such embarrassing life pressure, in a family environment that has lost maternal care. This originally warm love has been deeply suppressed into everyone's heart, while simple and rude threats and reprimands have become commonplace. When a necessary member of a family is missing, the entire family is thrown out of balance, both psychologically and physically. What Billy lacked because of this was that tender maternal care.
Billy took weekly boxing training sessions under his father's arrangement. He did not like this kind of direct violent movement, but a group of "little swans" practicing ballet around him aroused his curiosity and attention. After several repetitions, he finally started the ballet journey without telling his father. It can be said that Little Billy's encounter with ballet is an essential attraction. The elegant and slender expression of ballet, like the care of his mother, often touches the sensitive and weak part of his heart, and the warm and cheerful rhythm of the dance just happens to be restless with him. His youthful mood is in line with him, and he can vent and pursue it through enthusiastic dancing. More importantly, Mrs. Wilkinson, a ballet teacher, saw Billy's extraordinary potential with a keen eye, and it was under the perseverance and training of this Bole that Billy could embark on his own dancing life journey. .
As mentioned earlier, there are various contradictions lurking in this family, and members of this family also have different degrees of conflict with people from the outside world. And the film is pushed to the climax step by step by these many contradictions.
The first is the conflict between the single father and Billy. "Ballet is for women, men who practice it are sissies." In this masculine family, it is not easy to reverse such a concept. Billy also encountered such a psychological barrier when he was new to ballet, not to mention his father who knew nothing about ballet. His father and brother firmly opposed him taking the time to learn these things. Under the huge pressure of family and reality, Billy could only practice secretly from them, but after the incident, the conflict intensified. Their conflict culminated when Billy missed an important dance exam and Mrs Wilkinson found his home just as Billy's brother had just been released from jail. So everyone's resentment and anger broke out at this moment. Father and brother had a big quarrel with Mrs. Wilkinson, and the brother even said in a mocking tone to Billy: "You can dance ballet? Then show me a section. Look!"
Billy, who was struggling on the edge of reality and dream, was cornered. He couldn't find an exit. His face was flushed, and his anger and depression made him collapse. The director used a set of unusual images to express Billy's mood at this time. This is also one of the most exciting dance scenes in the film. The language of the scenes is full of deep meaning and shocks my heart everywhere: Billy is surrounded by high-walled courtyards. He danced wildly in excitement, looking for an exit like a trapped beast in a cage, but bumped into walls everywhere. Then, he danced wildly on the long street, spinning, spinning, spinning, spinning round and round, and stopped abruptly in front of a wall! He shoved his foot hard against the high wall blocking the road of his dream, but it still stood unbreakable. The difficulties that lay before him were so powerful.
The most ingenious thing is that the director used a very similar dance scene to show the scene where his father finally recognized Billy. His father accidentally found Billy and his friends dancing in the gym. Facing the angry father who suddenly broke into the door, Billy provocatively started dancing in a frantic rhythm in front of him. Accompanied by tight steps, the hall seemed to Only him. Then, spinning, spinning, spinning, the moment it came to my father, it stopped abruptly. There was a challenge in Billy's eyes: this is the ballet I love, and I have to express myself no matter what is in front of me. The father was obviously shocked by this passion. The moment he faced Billy's unrelenting eyes, he felt a vibration in his body, and he finally understood how strong his son's love for ballet was! It was also at that moment that he made up his mind that no matter how difficult it was, he must help his son fulfill his dream.
The conflict between father and brother intensified with the deepening of the strike. Considering Billy's future and the family's situation, his father had to opt out of the strike. In the eyes of Billy's brother, this act was tantamount to a "traitor". Young and vigorous, he thought his father was cowardly to stop him from striking, so when he stormed out the door in the middle of the night, the gap between them was unprecedented. But after all, blood is thicker than water. Facing his son's questioning on the mining field, his father's deep pain was finally exposed in front of his son. His helplessness and vulnerability were poured out with tears at that moment. The father and son were embracing each other and crying, and the gap between them was also buried in emotion at this moment. This is also the most touching scene in the film, and the instant emotional outburst always gives people a strong shock.
In addition to the relationship between father and son, the most important part of the film is the relationship between Mrs. Wilkinson and Little Billy. Mrs. Wilkinson was critical, stern, and a little sophisticated, but she was kind and gentle at heart. For Billy, who lost his mother at a young age, she was not only a strict ballet teacher, she also acted as a mother. Of course, the cooperation between them was not all smooth sailing. In the face of severe training and bad family disturbances, Billy's mentality gradually tilted. He felt that Mrs. Wilkinson trained him to apply for the "Royal Ballet School" in order to personal gain. He began to doubt everything, including the sincerity of each other. When everything in his heart blurted out without hesitation, the words pierced people's hearts like sharp arrows, and Mrs. Wilkinson gave Billy a slap in the face. Then there are the two weak souls who need comfort at the same time. Yes, they are all people who are fighting for their dreams. One is a child who is struggling for their dreams, and the other is a great mother like a mother who dreams of the success of this child. When these two people meet, what is the big estrangement and difficulty? So we saw them dancing happily together again, Billy reading his mother's letter in front of her, the kindness in Mrs Wilkinson's eyes and the satisfaction in Billy's eyes.
Jamie Bell, the young actor who played Billy Elliott, has been dancing since he was six years old. It is precisely because of the director's discerning eye that the 13-year-old Billy Elliott was selected from among more than 3,000 English teenagers through various assessments. In that year's British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) selection, he deservedly won the best actor.
Therefore, with Bell's wonderful interpretation of the adolescent Billy and the director's meticulous characterization of the adolescent's psychology, the film presents the most difficult point of youth films to grasp - truth, and skillfully integrates this truth into this British sketch. Among the unique humor, people will have endless aftertastes after laughing. This kind of detail in the film runs through almost the whole film, which makes the laughter and dance send the relaxed rhythm to the depths of everyone's heart.
Like Mrs. Wilkinson's precocious little daughter, Billy has always been fond of Billy, but Billy just doesn't appreciate it. When they were chatting and playing in the room, she would seriously tell Billy about her parents' sexual affairs, and would suddenly ask, "Do you want to look under my skirt?" , we will suddenly realize that although the eleven-year-old is full of childishness, the throbbing of youth has begun to haunt their hearts. Different from the relatively heavy and cruel portrayal of the same plot in Ang Lee's "Ice Storm", director Stephen Dauri has always used a light and humorous way to express such sensitive details, which makes people smile and understand.
The list goes on and on, such as Mrs. Wilkinson's offer of a series of generous offers, as long as Billy learns ballet with her. Bi looked at her with puzzled eyes, and suddenly said, "You don't like me, do you?" Before Billy laughed mischievously, we were already laughing to the ground under the screen.
And Billy's good friend who likes to dress up as a girl. On a snowy night, Billy's caring eyes were full of concern, and in the face of the kiss he wanted to come forward, Billy asked hesitantly, "Aren't you gay? But I don't like it. Boys..." Hehe, simplicity is not ignorance, why are the children on the screen only innocent, cute and rigid, they may know everything vaguely, so they will face it calmly in their own way. So Billy will also fly back when he is about to leave, and give his good friend a smiling kiss. These tiny parts just highlight the director's unusually sharp penetrating power, allowing us to have a meaningful review and rest in the aftertaste.
At the end of the "Royal Ballet School" interview, when the examiner asked Billy how he felt dancing. The little boy's frown that had been frowning before slowly stretched out: "The electric current, as if there is an electric current flowing through the whole body, at that moment I realized that the whole world is only me..." This is the finishing touch of the whole film, There is no preaching or mystification, just a child describing his dream in his own way.
With such a magnificent dream, with relatives who love him so much, with such firm belief and persistence, Billy Elliott's final success has become a kind of sublimation.
And so, years later, while his gray-haired father and mature older brother sat in the theatre waiting anxiously, Billy Elliott, the once skinny boy, was a burly and graceful member of the Royal Ballet. With the melodious rhythm of "Swan Lake", Billy Elliott rose into the air like a swan flying with wings. Then the camera freezes at this moment. Transformed into a golden nostalgic color, making this dance an eternity.
This is "Billy Elliott", this is his dancing life.
Made on 2006-7-23
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