Summary
Durham Coalfield in England, 1984. Young Billy Elliot puts a record on the record player and plays the song "Cosmic Dancer" by T. Rex. As the song plays, Billy jumps up and down, dancing enthusiastically. He runs over to the stove and takes out some boiled eggs, before catching a piece of toast on a plate. He opens a door to bring the tray of food to someone in bed, but is disappointed to find that the bed is empty when he opens the door.
Billy runs outside and down the street looking for the missing person. In a field he finds his grandmother, clearly confused, wandering around. He takes her hand and leads her back to the house. That night, Billy talks to his brother, Tony in their shared bedroom. Tony scolds him for playing his records without permission, and Billy tells him, "If dad knew you smoked that stuff he'd go mental," referring to marijuana.
The next day, Billy plays the piano as Tony calls to their father, urging him to hurry up so they can make it to the picket line in time to protest. Their father, Jackie, comes out sullenly as Tony tells him that the strike will work. Jackie is not so sure, and Tony leaves without him. Impatiently, Tony tells Billy to stop playing the piano, and Billy protests that their mother would have let him if she were alive. Jackie leaves angrily, closing the piano, and Billy opens it again to play quietly, looking up at a photo of his mother.
Billy and his friend, Michael Caffrey, stand outside the school, Billy with boxing gloves around his neck. Michael chides Billy for trying to be a boxer, even though he isn't any good, but Billy protests, slamming the door and going in to box.
As he enters the gym, Billy sees that while one end of the gym is being used for boxing, the other is now being used for ballet lessons. Billy gets in the ring and begins to fight, doing an elaborate dance around the ring. He gets knocked down soon enough, as his father watches from nearby. After practice, the boxing coach tells him he cannot leave the gym until he's punched the bag properly, giving him the keys to give to the dance instructor when he's finished.
Billy watches as the pianist plays for the ballet class, punching the bag in time to the ballet instructor's orders. He hugs the bag and watches the dancing intently. The salty dance instructor, Sandra Wilkinson, lights up a cigarette and tells the pianist to play "The Sun'll Come Out Tomorrow," as Billy tries to say something to her.
When Billy stands next to the barre, a girl asks him why he doesn't join in, and he does. Sandra quickly comes over and tells him he needs to remove his boots if he wants to dance. Soon enough Billy is wearing ballet slippers, practicing with the others. Sandra adjusts him in a pose, then dismisses the class.
As Billy is walking home, Sandra drives up alongside him and tells him that he owes her 50 pence and he can bring it the following week. When he tells her that he cannot, as he is signed up for boxing, Sandra's daughter, Debbie, protests, "But you're crap at boxin'!" Sandra tells Billy that he seemed like he enjoyed ballet, but when he cannot admit he did, she drives away, frustrated.
The scene shifts and we see Fred Astaire dancing in a movie for a moment. As Billy walks his grandmother down the road, she tells him how much she loved Fred Astaire, and that she could have been a professional dancer if she'd tried. They go to Billy's mother's grave and Billy lays flowers in front of it, cleaning it up a bit. Meanwhile, Billy's grandmother looks at another grave as Billy calls her over.
That night in their shared room, Billy asks Tony, "Do you ever think about death?" "Fuck off," says Tony brusquely, and they go to bed. The next day, Billy walks with Debbie, Sandra's daughter, and she tells him that "plenty of boys do ballet." When Billy is indignant, saying that all the men who do it are gay, Debbie tells him that they're not all necessarily gay.
They pass a large group of armed policemen as they talk, and Debbie tells Billy about a straight ballet dancer. Billy tells her he has to go to boxing and leaves. We see Billy playing the piano that night, then later, sneaking to ballet instead of boxing. In the middle of a lesson, Billy doesn't know what to do with his arms, and Sandra insists that he should do what the others are doing. After class, Debbie tries to talk to Billy, but Sandra sends her away and asks Billy if he'll be coming to the next lesson. "I just, feel like a sissy," he says, to which she responds, "Well don't act like one." She asks for his ballet shoes if he's not coming back, but he opts to keep them.
At home, Billy hides his ballet shoes under his mattress. As his father comes into the room, he jumps on top of the shoes to cover them and pretends to be looking for his boxing gloves. "Those were my dad's gloves, you'd better take better care of them," says Jackie, leaving the room. After he's left, Billy puts his mattress back on the bed. At school, Michael and Billy do a run for gym class, and Michael leads him to a hiding spot so they can get out of the run. Michael asks Billy about ballet, and insinuates that he thinks Billy would look good in female dancer's clothes.
Later that day, Billy sneaks into the library, which is a small trailer near the school, and looks at a book about dancing. The librarian tells him he cannot take it out on a junior ticket. Suddenly, a man runs outside the library and moons a police car. As the librarian turns to look, Billy sticks the book in his waistband and sneaks it out of the library.
We see Billy looking at his ballet book at home in the bathroom. Propping it on the shelf, he practices a position, falling over after a moment. The scene shifts between Billy in ballet class and Billy at home practicing a pirouette in the bathroom, at one point falling into a tub filled with water. In class, Sandra scolds Billy for his poor form. He practices more and more at home, and we see a montage of him doing a pirouette, hearing Sandra yelling "Go Billy!" as he does.
Analysis
The film has a playful, heartwarming tone from the start. In a coal mining community in England, a young boy in athletic shorts dances jubilantly to T. Rex, the glam rock band. We watch him as he tends to household chores and prepares for his day, and it is all informed by his love for music and dance. The fact that he is a young boy who just wants to dance is subversive socially, especially in a coal town, but it is also what is meant to immediately endear the viewer to his plight. This juxtaposition, between the young boy and the grittiness of the world to which he belongs, is a major part of his charm.
Billy's story is set against the political backdrop of Margaret Thatcher closing the mines in England in 1984 to violent protests from miners, including Billy's brother Tony. While Tony is passionate about the cause, their father Jackie is not so sure. The tension between Tony and Jackie is only further exacerbated by Billy's preoccupation with music and the arts, hardly suitable pastimes for a boy in a working-class British family.
Also heightening the tension in the house is the fact that Billy's mother is no longer alive. Jackie, left to parent alone, with only an old and senile grandmother to help him, hardly has a maternal touch. When Billy is playing the piano one morning, Jackie scolds him for making music, slamming the piano hood down when Billy protests that his mother would have let him. Billy's mother was apparently supportive of Billy's artistic interests, but his father, who has serious matters to worry about, cannot bring himself to support his son.
Billy's dreaminess and passion for the arts are soon given a focus when he accidentally encounters a ballet class taking place in the same gymnasium where his boxing lessons take place. When everyone from boxing has left, Billy inserts himself into the ballet class, taking a place at the barre with all the young girls in tutus. A young boy in boxing gear doing a plié is a striking image, and the film includes many comic instances of Billy mirroring the elegant movements he sees, when what he is supposed to be doing is becoming a tougher boxer. He just cannot help but dance, even when every man in his life is insisting he ought not to.
Part of the humor and charm of the narrative is the fact that Billy knows that he wants to be a dancer in his body before he can admit it to himself in his mind. Because of how homophobia and prejudice against artistic young men in his working-class community functions, even after trying his hand at ballet, Billy doesn't think that he likes dancing much, insisting to Debbie that he is a boxer even though this is blatantly not the case. With no encouragement from the men in his family, Billy must have an internal fight with himself about his own desire to dance, and he resists an inclination that is stronger than he realizes.
