Billy Elliot [2000 feature film]

Although the bulk of the film does cover the UK Miners' Strike up to and after its formal end on 03/03/85, there is a post-script identified on-screen as being fourteen years later. Billy's sitting on a London-bound coach in 1985 dissolves to his older father and brother sitting on a Jubilee line train arriving at "Westminster" station, en route en route to seeing him appearing in Matthew Bourne's all-male version of Swan Lake. Allowing for a generous rounding down, this just about fits with the opening of the station's Jubilee line platforms on 22/12/99.

Unusually, the choice of location seems very much deliberate, rather than simply being expedient "local detail" to establish the location as London. Billy's father, a coal miner who has spent his whole working life underground, is seen intently studying a pocket line diagram of the network, and then gazing around in wonder as he travels up the escalator, clearly moved at how different this newly-built subterranean place is from those he was more familiar with.

Image 1 Image 2
Image 3 Image 4

The London Underground in Films & TV

PAGE HISTORY:
01/10/08 First upload
22/10/17 Hosting transfer & amendments