Billy Liar

Billy Fisher is an incrediblely relatable young man who lives with his parents, has a boring job at a funeral home, two fiancee's, and tries to keep himself sane by spending as much time as possible daydreaming about Ambrosia, a perfect world where he is the king, war hero, and all other types of interesting people. He does believe that he has a job waiting for him in London working for a famous comedian as a writer, but first he needs to quit his job and get rid of the fiancee's he doesn't want anyways.

I was instantly struck by how easy it was to emphasize with Billy. He knows that he's better than the situation he's found himself in and just has to find a way to get out. He uses little fibs to make social situations easier, but these have snowballed into him finding himself with two unappealing fiancee's. When he seemingly catches a lifeline from comedian Danny Boon, it seems like everything will be easy from then on in. Boon however has never even heard of him and was probably just sending him a polite thank you for his material. It's a completely accurate representation of what happens when you build something up in your head as being much more important than it is. This setback just kills Fisher inside and might be the thing changes the course of his life forever.

Tom Courtenay made Billy into the most everymanish everyman possible. I constantly thought I was watching scenes from my life play out on screen, not by what he was doing, but by how he reacted to everything. Here is this young man who just wants to be comfortable, but has sank so deep into the rut that is his average life that he can't find a way out. The daydream sequences are entertaining to be sure, but the scenes where we see Billy truly react against his life are my favorites. When he is in the graveyard with one of his fiancee's and he has to lie to keep his facade going, but he becomes so frustrated he almost blows up at her; it's such a great example of the daily balance one must go through between one's own needs and society's. Billy has his own little successes like having a song he wrote be played at the local club, but he is so overcome by the dampers on his life that this seemingly important moment has no effect on him. By the end of this film, I felt like someone had took all my character traits and made a film to mock me with them.

The first time I watched this, I was drained by the ending. I was hoping to see the perfect ending play out as what I'd like to happen in my life, but then it all slipped away. The second time I watched it, it was even worse because I knew it was coming, and I was really hoping that somehow it would change. The ending involves the most frusterating yet entertaing part of the movie, Liz, played by a really attractive Julie Christie. She's a girl that Billy had a fling or something with sometime before the setting of the movie. She represents what Billy wishes he could be. At her first appearence in the movie, Billy remarks to a friend that "She's crazy. She's does anything she's feels". We then see her walking carefree past a bunch of shops and then encountering Danny Boon at a store opening ceremony. When she finally meets up with Billy, he's at the end of his rope. She convinces him to go with her to London where they could live free and pretty much do whatever they wanted. Billy could visit with Danny Boon and try to sell him some jokes. It would be the perfect scenario. He meets up with her at the train station and they board the train. At the last moment, he tells her he wants to grab some milk to bring on the train and we see him agonizing over whether he should go or not. We hear the train leave and when he aimlessly walks after the leaving train we see that his bag is waiting for him on the side of the tracks. He goes home and imagines himself in Ambrosia again. It makes sense, but still fills me with a combination of anger, confusion, and most of all despair. Billy just didn't have the courage to go after the dreams he constantly pined for, instead choosing to retreat to his boring, yet comfortable home. I would be on that train in a heartbeat with 1960's Julie Christie.