Birthpsychology at the Movies

Billy Eliott
A Movie Review by Jon RG and Troye Tuner

Billy Elliot is the story of an 11-year old boy whose coal miner father sends him to boxing classes. The gym where the classes are taught is shared with a little girls' ballet group. Billy's soul, it turns out, is filled with a music which electrifies his feet, his legs, his whole body--his being. The film, which earned three Academy Award nominations, chronicles Billy's sometimes kicking, sometimes shuffling, sometimes exuberantly dancing feet from coaltown to the Royal Ballet School in London and, ultimately, to professional stardom.

There are two critical points which probably lost Billy Elliot the Oscar. Billy's grandmother, bordering on dementia, has one line that echoes out from the closing-in corridors of her mind in support of Billy's desire to dance: "I could have been a ballet dancer!"  The poignant moment in their relationship comes when Billy, packed and rushing to catch the National bus to London, is captured in a last embrace with grandmother, knowing that--just as with his dead mother--he will never see her again. Instead of a moment of incredible potential light, in which--as he lifts his suitcase to climb aboard, grandmother repeated, "I could have been a ballet dancer!" one last time--the scene is smothered in silence.

The second problem occurs when the adult Billy Elliot, after a monumental buildup of mental, emotional, physical and spiritual focus of energy, and now the star of "Swan Lake", makes a magnificent leap across the Royal Ballet stage. The movement of ascension propels all of us heavenward in an incredible expansion of consciousness. Billy transports us, captured in a freeze frame, and holds us infinitely in the tearful sky above the tragic Swan Lake. Instead of allowing us to hover, suspended in the caress of Tchiakovsky's magical theme, the whole effect is destroyed by a cacophonous reprieve to Billy's pubescent steps, bleeding into the film credits. A moment of spiritual expansion is ruined!

And what has this to do with prebirth psychology? The question, of course, has to do with why Billy Elliot needs to dance. What is the link between grandmother's dream of being a ballet dancer, and Billy's realized destiny? And Billy's mother was not skipped in the connection: the film shows her during the pregnancy for Billy, transfixed while watching the dancing feet of Fred Astaire in 1940s Hollywood movies. And what about the dream of Billy's grandmother?