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. Whilst Jackie was involved in the miners strike Billy started using his weekly boxing money on ballet lessons. Billy had a natural talent but when Jackie found out his money was being wasted on ballet lessons he was furious. This strained their relationship a lot, as Billy just wanted to keep out of Jackie's hair and keep doing his ballet. By the end of the film a few days before Billy was going away to the Royal Ballet Academy there is a scene in which Billy and Jackie are just sitting together on a fence, and Billy pushes his father off. When the both fall to the ground they are absolutely laughing their heads off. This symbolic code shows that Billy and Jackie finally could understand each other and they could now be comfortable with each othe...