BFG

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Mark Rylance, Ruby Barnhill, Penelope Wilton, Jemaine Clement, Rebecca Hall, Rafe Spall, Bill Hader

The BFG —Big Friendly Giant — is a small, friendly movie, an attempt to reconcile the scale and dazzle of modern filmmaking with the quiet, mischievous charm of Roald Dahl’s 1982 novel of the same name. Directed by Steven Spielberg and written by his frequent collaborator Melissa Mathison (who died in November), it chronicles the relationship between the title character (Mark Rylance) and a young orphan named Sophie (Ruby Barnhill). The movie marks Steven Spielberg’s first directorial film for Walt Disney Pictures.

The movie is filled with gestures that meaningful. Like the BFG, it cares about the little things, and it moves with a grace that belies its size. It’s a film about about dreaming and storytelling, parenting and childhood, nostalgia and pragmatism, and the necessity of standing up for yourself even when you know you can't win. But most of all, it's a film about two unlikely friends. 

There’s a little bit of plot, mostly having to do with how the BFG will deal with the really big giants who scare him and call him “runt”; this stuff resolves itself so quickly that it's as if the story realized it was getting late and the kids needed to get to sleep. The movie is less interested in twists and turns than in watching the giant and Sophie interact. It's the kind of film that pauses to let characters tell each other stories and that recounts a dream by throwing shadows upon a wall. There are fart jokes, but unlike most movie fart jokes, they're not crudely desperate. They’re joyously strange in that Roald Dahl way, and they don't just happen when a scene needs, well, gas; the movie builds toward them patiently, the better to keep kids on the edge of their chairs waiting for that first flap-flap sound.

The movie is never too exact about its meanings; they're fluid, changing to reflect a given situation. That means the giant can be an adult who has brought a child into his world and is scared she might die because of something he did, or failed to do. But he can also be a child who lets himself be mothered by Sophie, a kid who was forced to grow up too fast. From a distance, the shambling, silver-haired BFG often suggests a doting but scatterbrained grandfather. The bigger giants in the land of the giants stalk around like irresponsible, petty, volatile parents who have no idea how to give or accept love because they never learned how. (The BFG tells Sophie that giants don’t have parents.)  

The film dwells into real world by making us realize the existence of fantasies and at the same time helping us learning a lesson through it.