The BFG (2016)

The BFG (2016)

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Mark Rylance, Ruby Barnhill, Penelope Wilton, Rebecca Hall, Bill Hader

The BFG is Steven Spielberg’s first official box office flop, which is a rare thing because ever since he kicked off Summer Blockbusters back in 1975 with the creation of Jaws (1975), he’s been on the good side of box office success for most of his career. Even his bad ones make money, just look at the disastrous Indiana Jones sequel, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) or Spielberg’s failed attempt at a war comedy, 1941 (1979) both made their money back even though they stunk. So The BFG (2016) is a landmark movie for Spielberg, but only because its his biggest failure. Yet, did it deserve to fail? Is it a stinker? We’ve seen Spielberg half-ass a movie haven’t we? Just the other day I was watching The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) and realized how truly lame it actually is. Sure it’s got gee whiz special effects, double the dinosaurs (oh wow, two T-REX’s!) and lot’s of action, but at its core, the tepid script doesn’t even compare to Jurassic Park (1993) in terms of overall quality, there was no meat with those potatoes, dare I say no heart! But we forgive Spielberg because then he turns around and makes another great film and well, we forget all about his last bad one. But is The BFG one of his bad ones? Was Spielberg half-assing it with The BFG? Why did it tank so spectacularly at the box office?

The BFG is all about this little girl called Sophie who resides at an orphanage in London. She likes to stay up late at night reading, organizing the mail and doing all sorts of things while everybody is sound asleep. She’s a night owl. On one of these late nights, she sees a giant walking through the fog filled streets of her sleepy London town. Realizing he’s been seen, the giant snatches Sophie and takes her with him to the “Land of the Giants”. While at first Sophie is scared, she soon befriends the big friendly giant. Together they go on dream catching adventures. Sadly, there are other giants who are bullies and want to eat Sophies and all the little boys and girls in London. Sophie and The BFG must devise a way to stop their cannibal ways. Can Sophie and her Giant find a way to stop them?

The BFG is based on Roald Dahl’s book of the same name. Dahl was also the author behind such children’s classics as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Witches and Matilda, all of which have also been adapted to films. So just to make thinks clear here, this film is based on the book of a beloved author, directed by one of the greatest directors of all time and produced by Disney the most successful movie studio at the moment. So why did it flop? I was curious about this myself, the trailers made the film look magical, and truth be told it is. It’s a fairy tale that involves giants, the origin of dreams and true friendship. It felt like a mix between Peter Pan and  Jack and the Beanstalk. So, with all these good things going for it, why the failure? I guess the only true reason I can think of is that it’s not all that exciting. Sure not every movie has to be action packed. In my book, there’s also space for films that are quieter in nature, films that slow things down, that feel like someone is whispering a story under the covers of your bed in the middle of the night. The problem is that today’s audiences are so jaded, so used to superheroes smashing buildings in half, that when a film comes along about a gentle, friendly giant, an old man who weaves our dreams together, then it’s considered too slow. Then the films target audience tunes out. And it’s true, this is a slow paced film, but it’s my opinion that this is exactly what Spielberg was aiming for, a sleepy sort of fairy tale. So be ready for that kind of film.

What took me by surprise where the themes of the film. I had no idea that this movie was going to be all about belief, faith and God. Oh wait could the letters B.F.G. stand for the words belief, faith and God? Could I be stretching it? I don’t think so, the films themes are fairly obvious. This movie is quite similar to the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe books, they address issues of faith, they push the idea of believing in a magical, eternal being that’s watching over all of us, taking care of us, wishing goodness upon our lives. That this magical being is there even though we can’t see him, that all we have to do is “feel him” in our hearts. That all we have to do is take that magical leap of faith, blindly believing the notion and that if we do, then he will be there when we need him the most, when we are in pain, lonely or sad. Thankfully, Sophie is inquisitive. After all her name is Sophie, an allusion to philosophy which in itself means the search for knowledge which explains why Sophie likes to ask lots of questions to the giant, like how old he is. The giant tells her he’s an eternal, that he’s always existed, the biggest allusion to God in the entire film, which is why there’s no doubt in my  mind the giant in The BFG represents ‘God’.

I’ve always found the idea of God a fascinating one. Every society, every culture has their idea of God and to me that’s fascinating on its own. How no matter what country we are from or what society we grow up in, we all end up thinking that there’s something bigger than us, something more powerful. The idea that there’s an eternal, magical being watching over all of us is a comforting one and I understand why a lot of people choose to believe in it. I personally can’t blindly believe in something I’ve never seen. I can be open to the idea of it, or the possibility, but I can’t say ‘God’ exists because there’s no way of proving it. Which is why it rubs me the wrong way when this type of idea is reinforced, especially in children’s films, as if they’re trying to incept these notions early in childhood.  At one point Sophie jumps of a balcony because she “feels” the giant and “knows” he will be there to rescue her. Of course the giant appears and saves her, but in real life, it would be another story. No magical giant is going to come out of nowhere and save you, in real life you have to save yourself. In real life you jump of a balcony, you’ll end up as a big grease spot on the pavement. The point the movie is trying to make is you have to take that leap of faith and believe in God. You have to believe he’ll be there to save you.  “I do believe in fairies, I do, I do” comes to mind for some reason, yet fairies are a fantasy, same as this movie. The reason I dissect these themes is not because I’m nitpicking, it’s because movies are about us. Same as books or songs, they always have something to say about human nature.

But anyway, theological themes aside, I still managed to enjoy the film because it can be interpreted in other ways as well. Maybe that magical being watching over Sophie represents an adult, your father, your mother, or whoever chooses to take care you and guide you through life. I chose to see the film this way. Sophie is an orphan, and The BFG chooses to bring some goodness into her life, he felt her loneliness and her need and chose to be a friend to her, the father that she never had, a step father of sorts and though step fathers and mothers are often times vilified in films and books, a lot of times they can be more of a father and a mother then the biological one. So that’s another way to see the film. Ultimately, I think this movie was actually rather sweet. Basically, an old man and a little girl find a way to connect, to become friends in spite of generational barriers. They learn to appreciate each other past  generational gaps. The old have a lot to learn from the old, and vice versa, so that’s another level on which the film works.

Technically speaking, the film is amazing, the special effects flawless. The giants look truly gigantic. Spielberg here once again demonstrates his uncanny ability to work with children. Ruby Barnhill does an amazing job here playing Sophie, she comes off as an intelligent child, who likes to read and use her head to come up with solutions for any given situation. The problem with the film is that though Spielberg works great with children and has made some wonderful children’s movies like Hook (1991) and E.T. The Extraterrestrial (1982), I think The BFG is a tough pill for kids to swallow in terms of pacing; many children will undoubtedly find it “boring”. I was watching it in a theater filled with about 10 people and this woman kept telling her boyfriend she wanted to leave because she couldn’t understand what was happening on screen. That she was bored and this was a grown woman! She was pleading to her boyfriend to leave the theater! They did about half way through. I guess your enjoyment of this film will depend on your attention span. If it has a short fuse, you’ll probably walk. If on the other hand you have patience and can take a shorter paced film, you’ll probably stay and enjoy it. 

Rating: 4 out of  5

Transcendence (2014)

Title: Transcendence (2014)

Director: Wally Pfister

Cast: Johnny Depp, Rebecca Hall, Paul Bettany, Cillian Murphy, Morgan Freeman

Funny story with this movie: I went to see it on what Catholics call Holy Friday and on that day, actually that whole weekend, well, theaters where flooded with church religious folks going to see either God is not Dead (2014) or Heaven is for Real (2014). So I felt out of place going to see Transcendence which touches upon the dangers of religious fanaticism, from a more philosophical angle. Transcendence is a movie against religion, not for it. Funny part is that the theater that was playing God is not Dead was right next to the one playing Transcendence and both films were starting at the same time. The interesting part is that I could  see people entering in droves to God is not Dead while every once in a while, somebody would go into Transcendence and my first thought how this was all so symbolic of what goes on in the world. So very few people are inclined towards the philosophical, the thought provoking. 

I’m of the mind that religion is dying off little by little and that thanks to the help of the internet and social media, people are slowly realizing just how much of a fairy tale religion is. The powers that be know this, which explains the avalanche of religious flicks we’ve being seeing lately. It almost feels like a desperate attempt to inject society with religiosity again. The powers that be also control Hollywood and they know how to use it well. I mean, even Hitler realized the power of cinema to transmit his ideas! So anyhow, this avalanche of Christian movies is to me, the lowest type of religious propaganda, so sleazy, so obvious in its desperation. There could be another explanation for the recent onslaught of religious flicks: money. Religious people don’t need much to get all fired up and Hollywood knows it. This explains why a prejudiced film like God is not Dead is making money. Hollywood knows this is an untapped market, and it seems they now want to exploit it as much as possible. I mean, this month alone we had 3 religious themed films! And they all have these titles that make it obvious they have an agenda. God is not Dead….Heaven is for Real…I'm in Love with a Church Girl….these titles let us see the kind of ideas that they want to infuse into society. God isn’t dead no matter what your university teachers tell ya! Heaven is Real, look at this little kid who went to heaven...and when you marry, make sure she’s a church girl! What the?! What’s next? A film called Science is the Antichrist?  

I mean, it’s not like films about ‘not believing’ are so obvious with their titles. Just look at a film like Transcendence; there’s nothing to tell you that it’s a film about religious fanaticism, the themes are not blunt or in your face. The themes are not even implied in the films title! Nope, the films themes are hidden behind meanings and symbolisms; you don’t feel like you’re being preached to. With films like God is not Dead and Heaven is for Real, I feel like am being preached at from seeing the previews alone! So anyways, there I was, doing my part in supporting a philosophical film with interesting themes and intriguing cyberpunk elements which I am a sucker for, unfortunately Transcendence wasn’t a very exciting film. Sure it was philosophical, and sure it had interesting concepts which I was diggin’ for the most part, unfortunately it all builds up to nothing. I wanted a bigger bang for my sci-fi buck! Unfortunately the filmmakers weren’t all that interested in showing us anything amazing or mind blowing.

The thing with this movie is that it had all the appropriate elements to deliver something thought provoking and cool at the same time. The concept of artificial intelligence becoming sentient, fully aware of its existence is incredibly interesting to me. It presents us with the terrifying notion that computers might one day think, like us, or for us. It goes even further and plays with the ideas of transferring our consciousness into an artificial intelligence, so that it might duplicate us in a way, so that we might, in a way, live forever. Of course the logic behind it is a lot of bullshit science, the kind of science that they show us in films where complicated scientific procedures are explained away with a simple sentence. And that’s fine as far as I’m concerned, I don’t need things to be explained to me, this side of the film reminded me of the dream traveling technology in Inception (2010) which is never explained in the film. It’s like the famous ‘McGuffin’ , you don’t really need to know what it is, or how it works. What matters is how we go from point A to point B. Unfortunately point B in Transcendence takes us nowhere. Interesting concepts are presented but never taken to their full potential, I feel they could have pushed things a bit further, they played it too safe in my book.

The film kind of contradicts itself because it presents us with Will Caster, a scientist who has successfully transferred his consciousness into the internet. He follows all the steps that a cult leader follows in order to build his empire. He buys land, he builds a society apart from the rest of humanity, and then he starts attracting parishioners by promising them paradise. I couldn’t help but think about David Koresh and his shenanigans in Waco, Texas, or Jim Jones and his Jonestown in Guyana. The problem is that the character of Will Caster isn’t really evil; he creates technology that actually helps humanity. His creations would make the world a better place, so then why does the film make it a point to portray him as an evil religious leader? So which is it, is he the leader of a zombie religion, or is he the savior of humanity? It’s not just that this character has that duality to it; it’s just that the character contradicts itself. The film is a jumbled mess in my book. It’s one that wanted to play with heavy themes, but ultimately didn’t know how to develop them in the best way possible. I mean, we're even presented with the idea of living in a world where technology has dissapeared from the face of the earth, which would have made an even more interesting film, but alas, they only hint at it. 

Ultimately, the biggest sin this film has going for it is that it was not entertaining. The ending is so incredibly dull I was literally fighting to stay awake. I guess a lot can be explained by the fact that this film was directed by cinematographer turned director Wally Pfister. The problem with technical guys becoming directors is that they just don’t have that vision necessary to tell a story in an entertaining or visually interesting fashion. Just because you’ve worked behind the scenes all your life, doesn’t mean you’d make a good director. Sure there are exceptions, but more often than not, technicians and writers don’t always make good directors. Examples of this are Blade Trinity (2004), Virus (1999), Spawn (1997), Eragon (2006), all directed by writers and special effects guys who suddenly wanted to take a stab at directing. I’m not saying that Transcendence is a terrible film because it does offer us interesting concepts and at times interesting visuals, but aside from being dull beyond measure, it even has great actors in roles that go nowhere! Cillian Murphy and Morgan Freeman are next to useless here. To me, Transcendence feels unfinished or half assed; it didn’t push its concepts all the way. And those are some of the worst cinematic sins in my book; a missed opportunity every step of the way.

Rating: 2 ½ out of 5