Billy Elliot

Billy Elliot

Love and friendship plays a major role in everyday life. This is shown particularly well in the film Billy Elliot, directed by Stephan Daldry. It is set in Everington in 1984, during the miners’ strike. Throughout the film love and friendship is portrayed in a range of different ways as Billy, the main character, has a different relationship with each of the other characters. The effective use of symbolic and technical film codes and the narrative elements; point of view, plot and characterization positions the viewers to challenge the stereotypical understandings of love and friendship.

By applying symbolic codes the director has shown the relationship between Billy and his father Jackie Elliot to be quite unique. Throughout the film the relationship between Billy and Jackie change. In the beginning Jackie is very easily worked up, about the miners strike and the loss of his wife. This anger he takes out on his sons forcing them have to act very tough. In his time Jackie was a great boxer, therefore he wanted Billy to do boxing in order to become strong and fit. What Jackie didn’t know was that Billy was suffering greatly during these lessons, he just was not fit for boxing.

Throughout the film the director has used symbolic codes and technical codes. If the audience did not understand the relationship between them, the plot would be hard to interpret. This is giving every viewer their freedom to their own point of view. This strained their relationship a lot, as Billy just wanted to keep out of Jackie’s hair and keep doing his ballet. At the end of a film one is usually able to see interviews with the actors, explaining their characters and telling the audience what they liked best. This was hard for Billy to understand as he was at the age where he always asked questions, and short-tempered Tony was not happy about it. If it were not for Mrs Wilkinson, the plot