My father's dance.

Everyone I've spoken to who has seen the film Billy Elliot has in some way been moved. I, however, have been dramatically changed. For those who haven't had a chance to see Stephen Daldry's great little movie, it's the stow of a young boy in a British coal-mining town who forgoes boxing class

for the ballet group practicing nearby. He lives with his gruff father and (hot!) brother, both of whom are miners and not infatuated with the idea of a ballet dancer in the family. Through a series of well-crafted scenes--and some amusing, moving, and fiercely well edited dance sequences--our little Billy triumphs.

At first I thought what moved me was the extraordinary performance of Jamie Bell as Billy: open, vulnerable, struggling, and nimble as can be when he finally learns to discipline his dancing feet. I was only scratching the surface, though.

Then I thought, "It's the whole Flashdance-Footloose neomusical structure," a kind of movie I've always been partial to but the kind that doesn't seem to get made anymore. Not quite right again.

"It must have been the relationship between the disapproving father and his young son who eschews boxing for dancing," I thought next. After all, the climax of the movie comes when Billy's father catches him dancing with his best friend (who sports a tutu) in the gym and Billy dances his heart out for his dad--who sees his son's talent for the first time. "How could that not be a not-so-subtle metaphor for my own desire to be accepted as a gay youth?" I thought.

Almost there, but not quite.

It was weeks after I saw the movie that my true personal revelation inspired by Billy Elliot made it up to my consciousness. I had seen the movie in Paris while on vacation over the holidays with my partner, Christopher. (Good thing I can read French--the subtitles proved particularly helpful in understanding the dialogue that is delivered in thick lower-class British accents.)

I was in tears three or four times during the film, which, if you know me at all, isn't extraordinary. I'm an emotional kinda guy.

But while thinking about the film back in Los Angeles and preparing to write this column, I realized something extraordinary: I didn't identify as much with Billy as with his father!

To back up a bit, my father, William, left our family when I was a sophomore in college, following the death of my brother, his first-born son and namesake.

The loss was shattering for all of us but particularly for my father. He had never lived the life he imagined: He married at 19, fathered five boys and two girls, and worked virtually around the clock to provide for us. It was not a happy marriage, but he stayed--because that's what fathers in the '50s and '60s did. In recent conversations with him, after 20 years of not speaking, I have come to understand the frustrations of the marriage and raising a family before he had the chance to live his own life.

My William never really got to dance.

And as the "good son," I disapproved of every opportunity he tried to take to explore the world. When he'd put on his leather jacket and drive off in his Eldorado, leaving my mother in tears, I naturally disapproved. He was never the father of Leave It to Beaver or Father Knows Best--two shows I watched religiously after school.

Can you blame me? I was just a child and too self-involved and attached to my mother to know anything but fear. But I'm older now, and I see my own inability to put myself in his shoes. In a marriage with little or no love, he was searching for himself.

And so when I think of Billy Elliot now, I imagine the roles reversed. I see a man moving beyond the loss of someone he deeply loved, but unlike in the movie, where the loss was his mother, in this case, it's his son, Billy.

I watch my father dance--freely, a little wild, and filled with joy.

And now that's OK. I understand and say, "Go, Billy, go!"