Billy Liar

Billy Liar was recommended to me by my good friend, Brent, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's about a young man, Billy, who chooses to live his life in fantasy, and tell lie upon lie to everybody he comes into contact with. The film follows a single day in his life, in which he attempts to quit his job because he pretends he has a gig writing scripts for a local comic, keep the peace with his two fiances, and keep numerous other white lies purported throughout his life.

I liked Billy Liar because I can really relate to Billy, personally. I think that everyone can relate to him, in some ways, but I can, probably moreso than others. Often in my life, even to this very day, I retreat into worlds in my own imagination, populated by characters and surroundings I've created. So, Billy's flights of fancy really interest me, as they tend to take up more of his attention than reality itself does.

The character of Liz is the catalyst for change, if Billy will allow it. She's a free spirit in every way that Billy wishes he could be, and imagines that he is. She's always away in faraway places, wherever her whims take her, places that Billy can, and does, only imagine. They plan to run away together, to London, to live out their collective fantasies, but you have to wonder if Billy can even go through with it.

Billy is very afraid of change, I think, at least changes in reality. He's got it easy, knowing that his parents support him, no matter what he manages to screw up in whatever job he ends up in. Therefore, he's free to imagine a life less ordinary than his own, and if anybody bothers him, he can drift off to his own world again, or simply machine-gun them down. If Billy were to go off to London, to make it on his own, he'd have a myriad of responsibilities, and wouldn't be able to live in his imagination, like he can at home. Billy needs to stay at home, where he can live in his imagination, where he has control, free from all responsibilities. He simply cannot 'grow up.'

Change is all around Billy, though he's completely oblivious to it. Buildings are being torn down left and right, shopping centers are going up around, a revolution is staring him in the face, and Billy hasn't a clue. Once again, it goes back to the fact that, I believe, he'd rather stay in his own world, in control, where he can do and be whatever he wishes. He chooses to block it all out, to ignore the buildings being torn down, laugh off the Counsilor's ramblings about how the world is changing, and shrug off his boss' insistence that even coffins are changing. He remains oblivious to it all, not due to stupidity, but simply by choice.