Hello dear reader. I need to start with a confession. Well I say confession, it’s more of an admission really, that could possibly cost me some of those all-important ‘fab & groovy’ cool points that I’ve worked so hard on attaining. Growing up I wasn’t what you would call the sharpest knife in the box. I was slow learner, or as some of the more highbrow inteligencia out there would say, a bit of a thicko. Now, I’m not after sympathy or special treatment but I was effectively the poster boy for the ‘me fail English?, that’s umpossible’ club. However, It wasn’t all doom and gloom growing up. I did have good looks and a rather devilish smile to fall back on but from about the age of five till about nine, I didn’t enjoy reading at all. I found it really hard to concentrate and having to read books I didn’t like at school, basically meant I had absolutely no enthusiasm to read in my own spare time. What saved me from the abandoning the printed page came in the form of a small mobile book shop which turned up one sunny morning at my junior school. This was, if memory serves, a customised Luton van with makeshift shelving and a till. The driver of this magical van recommended a particular book as being fun to read and not like any other book I’d ever read. To his credit he was absolutely right on both counts. The book in question was ‘The Warlock of Firetop Mountain’ by Steve Jackson. It’s a fighting fantasy book which, for the uninitiated, means as you read through it, you get to decide what happens next in the story. This book was a revelation to me. Without it books could have ended up just being something other people did. Without that one book and its subsequent butterfly effect, I could have missed out such great literary giants like Douglas Adams, Steven King and Delia Smith.
Now, back to that all important confession/admission. Between the ages of five and nine, or as I like to call it ‘the wilderness years’ my reading back catalogue was a little thin on the ground. At school we had novels read to us, in a sort of communal Jackanory, with lots more floor cushions and fewer TV cameras but that didn’t really expose me to wide range of authors. I do remember having ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ read to me and its sequel ‘Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator’ but apart from that my only other Roald Dahl dalliance was with ‘George’s Marvellous Medicine’ and that was in no small part down to the one and only Rik Mayall, The. So what I’m trying to tell you all is, that basically, I have never read ‘The BFG’ and if I’m going to be brutally honest with you, I couldn’t have even told you what BFG stood for until my mid-teens. ‘Basil’s Furry Gerbils’ would have been a good guess at the age of twelve. As would ‘Bilingual Flappy Gangsters’ or even ‘Backdoor French Grandpa’s’ but thanks to the passage of time and the wonders of social interaction I now know that its stands for ‘Big Friendly Giant’ and here’s what I thought of the film…
The film itself has been a story of stop and start. Or should that be start then stop? It’s been in development for over twenty five years in one form or another but it wasn’t until Steven Spielberg, him off E.T. and Saving Private Ryan, came along that things finally stopped stalling and everything fell into place. For those not in the know, which included me up until a couple of days ago, the story centres around a young orphan called Sophie and the relationship she strikes up with a Big Friendly Giant, or what Richard Osman would call a Big Friendly Person. The Giant in question lives in a place called ‘Giant Land’ (it’s not on Google Maps, I’ve checked) and is pretty much shunned and bullied by the other Giants that live there because he won’t eat children. Now, where things get a little interesting here is when said ‘unfriendly child eating Giants’ start popping up and eating children in Britain. The very nerve of it, I know! So Sophie and the Giant pop off to see the Queen and with the her help the and assistance of some generals from the Royal Navy, Army and Royal Air Force (One of which is played by Matt Frewer or Max Headroom as he’s more commonaly known) they come up with a plan to banish all the nasty Giants and live happily ever after.
And there you have it. Not the most complex of plots and to be honest, it being a Roald Dahl story, it doesn’t need to be. What it is however is a very well-acted and very well made film. The Big Friendly Giant is played a Mark Rylance, who up until last year’s Bridge of Spies, I’d never heard of. He is a stage actor who’s started to make the crossover from mostly stage based work to appearing on a regular basis in films and television. As the Giant he is everything you could want in twenty four foot tall dream catcher. The computer wizardry that brings his performance to the screen is apparently a hybrid of motion capture, developed by WETA and the system that James Cameron used when he was filming actors in Avatar and you can see where the money has been spent. The Giant is completely convincing as a character and from his large ears to his bushy eyebrows he is able to convey emotion and believability effortlessly. The other great thing about this movie is the actress they’ve found to play Sophie. Her name is Ruby Barnhill and not only does she blow everyone else away when she’s on screen, including Rylance himself, she does it with the confidence of one of her peers, who’s been acting for decades. Ruby Barnhill is a name that you need to remember. She is destined for great things and as her age rises and the scope of rolls she’s offered increases, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there is a golden statue waiting for her, somewhere down the line.
The overall feel of the film and its visual style are what make it a very pleasant experience to watch. When you give quality script, written by the late Melissa Matheson, to someone who is arguably one of the greatest directors in history you do expect the end product to be polished and meticulously well made. The BFG does not disappoint in this regard. Throw in a score from John Williams on top of that and you have a children’s film that in unlikely to be equalled anytime soon. Spielberg’s thirtieth theatrical release proves that is he capable of not only creating great action icons like Indiana Jones and Bruce the shark but that he can also do deliver films driven by emotion and sentiment too. The BFG is going to have a long shelf life and I doubt that any one will be inclined to try and put this Dahl classic on the silver screen again, for a long time.
Twitter Review:
A young girl, an old Giant and a lot of magical moments. Rylance & Barnhill, A double act with no equal.
#scrumdiddlyumptious
Useful Links:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3691740/?ref_=nv_sr_1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZ0Bey4YUGI
http://www.empireonline.com/movies/bfg/review/
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