So, so, so many choices for the latest CineTV.blog - you can check out the tweet by clicking on this link here. I have had so many thoughts for this one.
Did I feel like getting a little bit vintage with the classic 'Footloose' - in a town where there was to be no dance, you couldn't help tapping along to that theme song. I've only ever seen this film once, and I was quite young, and it was many years ago, perhaps 20? Yet I can remember the rebellion like it was only yesterday!
Did I choose to go for something that was very much emerging from the 'teen genre' of the late 1990s and early 2000s? I was the right age to be caught up with the cheerleading flick, 'Bring It On' - but not the, what, twelve sequels which came after it?. This one was so different to anything I'd ever seen before, and I watched it a crapload of times.
But in the end, there could only be one winner, and it was, by a long margin, 'Billy Elliot'. A truly breathtaking film. It tells the story of a young working class boy, who was expected to participate in boxing and grow up to work in the coalmines. It was set in England as the Thatcher era strikes were in full swing, and boys were to boys, who would grow in to men.
The thing was, gender stereotypes, quite improbably, did not rob young Billy Elliot from pursuing an opportunity to learn ballet. Through the film, Billy's family were on the edge of disowning him, not so much for the dancing itself, but the connotations of sexuality it implied in a young man. The story then, is one about transition - and then it all clicks into place for Billy's dad.
He had a choice - there was no work, he was on strike. There was no money - and dance lessons, and pursuing a dream wouldn't be cheap. Billy's dad had to put aside his prejudices, and with tears in his eyes, he becomes a 'scab', crossing the picket line in order to give Billy the life he wanted.
While this story is so much about dance, and the love of dance - at it's heart is a story of humanity: a father and the lengths his love would go to to support his son.
The final scene (Swan Lake) will have you in tears, set many years in the future, when Billy's father attends Billy's performance, and as Billy soars across the stage, it was all worthwhile - the slow motion leap through the air, a physical metaphor of beauty, for the abstract emotions beneath it.
[Source](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2010/10/18/arts/dance/18swan-1/SWAN-jumbo.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)Oh CineTV, it's been too long since I've seen this one. I really need to set some time aside this weekend to again celebrate the film.
