It’s hard not to see something of director Steven Spielberg
in the humble craftsman at the center of his lovely adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The BFG. He’s a big friendly giant who
hears all the hopes and fears of mankind, harvests magic from a land of
imagination, and mixes them together lovingly into dreams and nightmares. He
keeps them bottled up, stored in his workshop for safekeeping. Then, in the
middle of the night, he gingerly steps out of giant country and into our world,
toting his spells to send our slumbering minds drifting into tailor-made
dreamlands. He, like Spielberg, knows how to cast the right spells for the just
the right effects, speaking directly to our hearts and minds with a purity of
intention and skill. He’s a master at what he does, and when his art starts to
glow before our eyes, we know we’re in good hands. Here is a movie of such
prodigious filmmaking skill deployed so gently and so casually that the trick
is how easy it looks. Spielberg’s enchanting approach to family filmmaking is
to allow the story to unfold at its own pace and tone, inviting empathy and
letting magic appear without overly insisting on itself.
As the movie begins the towering BFG (a digital creation
soulfully embodied with a sweet melancholy in Mark Rylance’s
performance) encounters Sophie, a little girl (Ruby Barnhill). A precocious
child, she spends her nights unhappily roaming the halls of her orphanage. She
has insomnia, she’ll solemnly report, explaining her habits as well as her
unfamiliarity with dreaming. Obviously it’s quite a scary thing to see a
lumbering giant outside your bedroom window in the dark stillness of three
o’clock in the morning. Scarier still is the moment when a hand the size of Sophie’s
entire body slides in past the curtains and picks her up, spiriting the poor
girl away to a hidden realm where she cowers behind enormous everyday objects.
There’s a moment of unease at the initial kidnapping, but the girl quickly sees
there’s nothing threatening about this gigantic man. He’s harmless, shrugging
as he explains he had no choice but to take her with him. Can’t risk being
reported and hunted by “human beans,” the linguistically tangled chap says.
This is a potentially worrisome situation, but Spielberg is
quick to comfort the audience by revealing the BFG to be the runt of giant
land. A scrawny, lanky sweetheart with twitchy big ears and a goofy grin, he’s
much shorter than the others of his kind. He is picked on by the other giants
(voiced by Jemaine Clement, Bill Hader, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, and others) for
being a vegetarian instead of a cold-hearted cannibal gobbling up human beans
three meals a day. Their diet is only implied, but certainly puts our Friendly
Giant in a position of sympathy. He just wants to work his magic in peace, but
the bullies push him around, hector him about “vegi-terribles,” and start
sniffing around when they smell the scent of a girl-sized snack. Sophie sees in
him a loneliness she recognizes, and quickly comes to trust him. The thrust of
the plot sees her protected by him, and brought into the secret dream factory
he’s made his life’s work. They become buddies, trusting one another to do
what’s best. There’s charming storybook logic here – surely it’s no coincidence
Sophie is reading with a flashlight under the covers when he appears – as two
kindred spirits bond over a desire to enjoy a life of peace, kindness, and
friendship.
It’s a pleasure to exist in this movie’s world, unhurried
and relaxed, allowing long dialogue scenes between the very tall man and the
small girl to stretch out, the awe of the fantastical interaction seeming
simply normal while seesawing in pleasing tongue-twister tangles of eccentric
giant jargon and childlike innocence. Giant Country is a fantasy drawn in
convincing and warm detail of delightful picture book simplicity and appeal.
Spielberg is always adept at integrating effects and live action with a
brilliant eye. Here he allows the digital space to create a light floating
camera, and a sense of space for real emotional rapport. It’s not easy to
generate a relationship between characters who only share the frame through
trickery, but here he draws it out perfectly. The world itself – a humble
hovel, a cave of dreams, a field of grumpy giants, swirling clouds, a glowing
tree in an upside-down reflecting pool – is striking and comforting,
representing the most primary colors cinematographer Janusz Kaminski has ever
had in a single shot. It sparkles with pop-up book confidence.
Spielberg, and the wonderful screenplay by Melissa Mathison
(the late, great writer of E.T., The
Black Stallion, and Kundun),
respects children’s capacity for comprehension, their ability to put together
visual puzzle pieces of plot and follow a story’s imagination. The movie
unfolds with a dreamlike trust in its fantasy’s power to carry away all who are
receptive to it. There’s conflict, yes, as the mean giants need to be stopped
before they become a deadly danger to Sophie. But the real core of conflict is
found in two lonely people who make a connection, a fragile, unsustainable
friendship that might as well be imaginary, but has the potential to leave them
both more confident and self-sufficient individuals. It’s moving, but not
condescending. The avuncular BFG (Rylance’s non-threatening eyes twinkling
behind the effects) and the adorable Sophie (Barnhill the sweetest orphan this
side of Annie) need only figure out the right dream – assembled in a
Kinetoscope blender casting flickering shadows on the dream factory wall like
Plato’s cave – to explain the situation to someone who can help. What a perfect
metaphor for storytelling, and a gentle child’s-eye-view to conflict resolution.
Eventually the film reaches a poignant resolution through
quietly magisterial whimsy that flips the fish-out-of-water scenario, bringing
the BFG to new people and places. (It’s great fun watching surprising
characters interact with his enormity, including struggling to make him feel at
home in the human world, culminating in, no joke, one of the best instances of
flatulence in cinema history.) But there’s no cruelty here, or in the eventual
solutions to everyone’s problems. The movie’s gentility is a much-needed tonic for
a cruel and cynical world. Spielberg’s masterful use of the moviemaking tools
at his disposal is at once classical restraint and clear-eyed use of the
cutting-edge. The result is a film of genuine absorbing, heartwarming magic.
Refreshingly tender and thoughtful – like a giant gingerly moving a child’s
tiny glasses to safety – the movie is soothingly composed and playfully imaginative.
It’s welcome respite from all those family entertainments, good and bad alike,
operating with manic panic of allowing downtime. The BFG has patience, the visual poise to play out in long takes
and to treat its digital creations as wonders instead of routine spectacle. Best
of all, it has the confidence to let small, delicate feelings animate a
production so big and strong.
