Dana reviews the anxiously awaited animated film, The BFG.
From Steven
Spielberg comes this long-awaited adaptation of the classic Roald Dahl book, The BFG – a gentle film starring an
effects-enhanced Mark Rylance as the titular Big Friendly Giant and young Ruby
Barnhill as the orphan, Sophie, who befriends him. Sophie, kept awake by her
insomnia, catches a glimpse of the BFG outside her orphanage’s window one night
as he is out delivering dreams to the sleeping world of London, and as he
whisks her up and off to Giant Country, her life is changed forever by her
special new friendship.
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| Dude. Your shoulder is rad. So much better than driving a car. |
Lovingly
crafted as all Spielberg masterworks tend to be, the visuals in this film are a
lightly fanciful lullaby; there is a distinction between the magical worlds of
the BFG’s home and his beloved Dream Country, where he catches dreams like
fireflies in mason jars to spread amongst the slumbering world, and the
hum-drum reality of Sophie’s England. The relationship that blossoms between
girl and giant is predictably saccharine; the BFG’s bullied station as the runt
of the giants who refuses to eat children the way his brutish neighbors do
mirrors the lonely little orphan girl’s bookish otherness the way one expects
it will at the outset. Unfortunately, the only really genuine puzzle piece is
the Giant himself – a doddering, wistful soul who serves the world he loves
with all his heart, most poignantly, by being its secret-bearer. Barnhill’s
Sophie is sympathetic enough, but is so strangely schoolmarmish that she comes
off largely as a petulant shrew for much of the film, too much a contrast to
the BFG’s far more childlike blundering and almost shy regard for the
whisperings of life all around him.
Their
friendship should be at the crux of the story, but it is overshadowed by a
desire to tell the story of how, trapping a special nightmare to feed the
Queen, Sophie and her Giant concoct a plan to be rid of the nine barbaric, cannibalistic
giants who share Giant Country with the BFG – and get in several fart jokes
while they go about it. The stakes are not explored deeply enough, however, with
the only real reason given that any giant seems to want to eat anyone being
their thuggish nature; the BFG alone seems to be intelligent enough to be
self-aware, preferring to feast on vegetables called ‘snozzcumbers’ (one is led
to believe these are not nearly as appetizing as Wonka’s snozzberries,
however). Whenever the relationship at the heart of the film is threatened, it
seems difficult to really care about it; the sense of danger doesn’t rise
enough for us to be driven into the characters’ world.
To be sure,
there is a general element of lovely whimsy, present in all narrative which originates
with Dahl – but unlike films based on his other works, the world-building just
is not entirely present here. The most fully realized scenes in The BFG come during the
dream-harvesting, as Sophie follows her Giant through a mirror-pond into a
resplendent, glowing nocturnal world where nightmares and beautiful dreams are
born, their colorful fairy-shapes swirling and dancing through ancient, gnarled
dreaming-trees to be caught in the tender hands of the BFG to later be released
into the hearts and minds of those to whom they call.
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| Dang. It just got scary around here. |
All in all, The BFG is a family film with very
little at stake in its narrative. But even at its most dramatic, or even mildly
violent, it carries little weight and doesn’t really delve deeply enough into
the connection between its two protagonists to help us form an emotional bond
to their friendship, or care much about its outcome. It is plain to see how
Sophie and her Giant influence one another, but the point of the story tangles
itself in too much forced sentimentality, leaving our dreams stuck in their
lightning-jars, beating against the glass, hoping for escape into the music of
the stars which only a Big Friendly Giant can hear.
Please share our review of The BFG.
Score
-Dana Culling