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When Billy receives a letter from the ballet school after his audition, we can see on their faces that both brother and dad are expecting disappointment as this is their norm. The only slightly disagreeable character, Sandra’s husband Tom (Colin Maclachlan), is also the only one to defend the government’s side and even the principal of the ballet school where Billy eventually auditions (an amusing cameo by Patrick Malahide) wishes Jackie good luck with the strike, doubtless the filmmakers’ little dig at well-meaning southern liberals…Įlsewhere in the cast, Draven bridges the gap between Lewis and Bell in his portrayal of a young man further along the road to becoming his father. In one scene, cutting between a ballet class and a confrontation between strikers and the police, Sandra is imploring her young dancers to be “powerful! proud!” just as we see Billy’s father on the picket line. Insofar as it takes sides, Billy Elliot’s sympathies are clearly with the miners. None of the characters knows this, of course, but they can surely sense it. The miners will, before long, accept defeat and the old smokestack Britain represented by Jackie (and, literally, by the huge chimneys behind the graveyard where Billy’s mother is buried) will start to give way to a service economy in which cultural industries, like ballet, are more valued than digging coal.
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Set alongside this, there’s also the permeating feeling of a society about to disappear.