TV Interview - Dance fever

A real crowd-pleaser with film-festival audiences in Cannes, Edinburgh and Toronto, Billy Elliot heralds the arrival of a promising new screen talent — no, not Jamie Bell, the 14-year-old star of the picture (though he makes an auspicious movie debut, as well), but rather 45-year-old Stephen Daldry, a celebrated stage director with the Royal Court Theatre in London and an avowed "late bloomer" among other British theater directors like Sam Mendes (American Beauty), who've already made the transition from one medium to the other."There's a whole group of us in the London theater, and it's all very collegiate. We all know each other and watch each other and help each other. I suppose, as the late bloomer of the bunch, I was itching to have a go at doing a film myself," Daldry says during a recent visit to Atlanta. "Otherwise, I don't really think of it comparatively, in terms of directing a film versus directing a play. They're just different. There are specific joys and challenges associated with both, and I'm sure I'll keep alternating between the two."
To that end, Daldry's currently back at the Royal Court staging the premiere of Caryl Churchill's new play, Far Away. No matter how successful this first film of his — and all the advance buzz suggests it will be — he says the last thing he's worried about is being tempted to take the Hollywood money and run, abandoning his theatrical roots in the process. "Frankly, money has never been a motivating force in my life, but even if it were, I've been lucky enough to do a couple of really successful plays, so for me the movies are more like a hobby, more about charity work than financial gain. If all I really wanted was to earn some big money, I'd go back to London before I'd go to Hollywood," the director quips.
At the emotional center of Billy Elliot is one such personal struggle for a motherless boy (Bell in the title role). He lives with his unemployed father and older brother (plus his senility-bound grandmother) in a small English village impoverished by an ongoing coal-miner's strike. When a local dance teacher (Julie Walters) inspires Billy to rise above the drudgery of his life by seeking enrollment in the Royal Ballet School of London, the kid is torn between a sense of loyalty to his family and the promise of flourishing apart from it.
It's the latest in a burgeoning genre of uplifting, life-affirming movies set amid the political and economic strife of working-class England during the throes of Thatcherism in the 1980s. Like the band members of Brassed Off or the male strippers of The Full Monty before him, the adolescent protagonist of Billy Elliot finds a definite reprieve through the "artistic self-expression" of dance.
So how does Daldry account for the film's seemingly universal appeal? "Ironically, it's the degree of authenticity in the story and the degree of honesty within the performances, which allow you to break away from being a film just about that specific time and place or those specific people. The themes in the film are ones we've all seen before, the idea of artistic self-expression as a means of transcending an oppressive environment, or the idea of working one's way through the grief of losing one's mother. It's about the relationship between teacher and student, and it's especially about fathers and sons."
The surest sign of his directorial acumen is the performance he enlists from young Bell, whom Daldry cast over 2,000 other unknowns. "It was a tall order. Obviously, the kid had to dance well enough that it would seem conceivable he could get into a ballet school, right? He also had to come from the very specific geographical region where the story takes place because it wouldn't be realistic to expect a young actor of that age to fake the accent very convincingly. Most of all, though, he had to ground and carry the entire film," he says.
"I've worked with quite a lot of them in the theater, and in my experience there are two sorts of child actors," Daldry elaborates with a smile. "Either you find a kid nearest the character and essentially just let him play himself, or you find a kid like Jamie Bell, a proper little actor who can draw on parts of his own life to play a scene, but who's also capable of making the imaginative leap into situations with which he has no direct experience."
There are many such imaginative leaps in Billy Elliot. More often than not, the movie soars.