#cliobarnard

The Selfish Giant is a smash -  not a smash in the Broadway sense nor will it prove to be Hollywood boffo.  No, The Selfish Giant is a smash in the more literal sense as frame by frame, it proceeds to smash your perception of the world and everything in it.   Clio Barnard is the director/writer and with this soul shaking film, she’ll rightly take her place in the chain of British social realists (including Charles Dickens and Mike Leigh).  Her all too human tale expresses tyranny, poverty, friendship and love in the projects of de-industrialized Bradford, England.  But Barnard’s film also transforms itself beyond realism and by it’s end climbs into the mystic.

The story follows two children, Arbor (Conner Chapman) and Swifty (Shaun Thomas) who are coming of age in an agrarian village scarred by the collapse of a manufacturing economy.  Arbor is the fast talking aleck who craves order in the disorderly.  Swifty is the soulful mope with a heart as big as the moon.   They are pint sized versions of Vladimir and Estragon who wait for hope in a world that only offers bullying, expulsion, exclusion and death.   

The heart of this film is the boys’ love for one another.  Barnard and cinematographer Mike Eley capture this love in touching light and playful scenes where the boys loll around together on a trampoline or make a heroic escape out of the schoolyard under a pewter sky.  Their love for one another takes place on horseback under the stars and it fires up as they face bullies in the playground on a rain soaked day.  It is also present in the face of startling cruelty.  

The shocking part of this film is that none of this cruelty is ever surprising, even as it startles us.  The promise of cruelty is held in almost every exchange and when it bubbles over, it’s like boiling water scalding skin.  You know it will hurt but there’s a space between until the pain manifests itself and blisters up red and swollen.  

There are many red and swollen characters in this film, mainly portrayed by the hardened and haggard adult cast led expertly by Kitten (Sean Gilder).  Kitten is the feline aggregator who reigns over a scrapyard which is a portal into the black market.  This portal becomes the field of dreams for Arbor and Swifty after they are expelled from school.  

Instead of staying home with their haunted mothers and angry fathers, Arbor and Swifty seek out Godot for themselves and instead find Kitten who immediately sets them to work as scrap collectors.   On the side, Kitten also runs a gambling stake with horses who race down the surface streets at dawn lugging draft carts.  After a stinging loss, Kitten desperately turns to the open hearted Swifty to win the road race with Kitten’s “prize horse” Diesel.  

It is at this point that Barnard steadies the storytelling with her social realism.  Instead of turning this into a tale about horse racing, she focuses on the horse Diesel dragging the boys around on a cart of scrap like modern day versions of Mother Courage.  Magically, there are shots in the film where we get to gaze into Diesel’s eye and we stare straight into the mystery of mysteries.

And it is at that moment that Barnard does something even more extraordinary than natural realism.  For all the stark portrayals of the hardened lives amid the industrial landscapes, The Selfish Giant transcends itself into something more akin to Au Hasard Balthazar, the 1966 French film directed by Robert Bresson.   That is to say, in the end, the film becomes a prayer.  And we need prayers for the end of the world and the beginning of something new.

Hans Luttmann