I’ve always been too awkward, too self-conscious, to laugh out loud in theatres. But there were parts in Steven Spielberg’s The BFG that blew all reticence into smithereens and inspired the sort of wide-eyed wonder and unabashed laughter we all promised our childhood selves we’d safeguard into adulthood.
For those of us whose birthdays were never good enough for an admission letter from Hogwarts, The BFG is the closest a film has come in a long time to waking the child inside, providing the assurance that life’s quite all right and encouraging us to dream away.
The whiff of Harry Potter that pervades the film perhaps has something to do with John Williams, who has composed and conducted the music. After all, Williams composed music for the first three Harry Potter films.
Or, perhaps it has something to do with the story being about an abused orphan who can’t wait to escape the shackles of her orphanage. Or perhaps it’s the magic of the world she goes on to inhabit. Or perhaps it’s because the film is an adaptation of a children’s book (The BFG by Roald Dahl).
It’s a pity that The BFG that had its international release a month ago hasn’t quite set the box office on fire, for it shows the difference filmmakers of the calibre of Spielberg can make when they handle such ‘small’ films. Spielberg imbues the story world with a soul that’s often found missing in many enjoyable Hollywood films made for children, like, say, the recent The Secret Life of Pets. When made with such earnestness, it makes you, the adult, not just simply tolerate ‘the scenes made for children’, but discover the very child in you.
Call to adventure
The mood is set as early as in the first scene when Sophie (Ruby Barnhill) peers out of her window and spots a giant sneaking around in the neighbourhood.
When the giant, played by the utterly convincing Mark Rylance, carries her away, bed sheet and all, you’re reminded of the irony of Sophie telling off a few unruly drunks for calling her “little missy”. As the Big Friendly Giant gambols away with little Sophie in his palm, like she were a trinket he chanced upon on the road, you know that her call to adventure has officially commenced. But, as the BFG realises, the hard part isn’t carrying her to Giant Country; it is in protecting her from the other man-eating giants — the Gizzardgumper, the Meatdripper, the Bloodbottler, and the Butcherboy — and in making his place habitable for her.
I loved how the BFG uses his colossal palm to mitigate the force of the water, so Sophie can take a bath. I loved how he realises that the fireplace is a bit too hot for her to dry herself later, how his hand-kerchiefs are like blankets to her, and vice-versa.
Fun to behold
It is delightful when this situation gets turned on its head eventually, as the BFG partakes in a feast at the royal household.
It is now the turn of the humans to think up inventive ways to accommodate a giant who finds even the royal palace so small that he has to crawl in its corridors. The ludicrousness of how they use a piano to manufacture a seat for BFG, how a garden sprinkler is used to pour coffee, is all, to put it simply, so much fun to behold.
The jokes write themselves when your situation has the Queen of England coming face-to-face with an awkward giant, who “doesn’t have the foggiest idea in the wonky world” about civilised life.
The BFG’s language, incidentally, is a running joke through the film, and it’s all classic Dahl. A TV is a telly-telly bunkum box, a radio is a radio squeaker, a pumpkin pie is a frumpkin fie… He even has a word, the whizzpopper, which makes flatulence seem bewitchingly wondrous.
And therein lies the beauty of the film: making the mundane explode with life and magic. Is that a lamp post you saw on the road, or a giant in disguise? So long as you’re watching The BFG, you feel like the world is devoid of troubles, that it is probably a jolly good place after all.
Isn’t that what we go to the cinema for, after all?
The BFG
Director: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Mark Rylance, Ruby Barnhill, Rebecca Hall, Bill Hader
Runtime: 117 mins
