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Roald Dahl: The BFG

By Jesse Kornbluth
Published: May 24, 2016
Category: Children

When “The BFG” was first optioned for a film, it was the early 1990s and Robin Williams was going to be the giant. But the technological challenge of filming a 10-year-old girl and a 24’ giant at the same time couldn’t be solved, so it wasn’t until 2015 that the film was made. The director: Steven Spielberg. The writer: Melissa Mathison, who wrote “E.T.” The star: Mark Rylance. Music by John Williams.

The film was shown, out of competition, at Cannes.

The standing ovation lasted four-and-a-half minutes.

Here’s a suggestion why (I needed Kleenex):

And another:

“Motion capture” — a technology that allows movements of an actors to be sampled many times per second, then processed digitally — has a lot to do with the dazzlingly beautiful film. “The most important thing I could contribute was to try to create real cinematic magic,” Spielberg says. “To do that, I needed all the giants to be creatures… I needed to infuse actual, human, God-given soul into an animated character.

But magic always starts in the story. And in this one book Roald Dahl — who could be a world class shithead — created a love story that has thrilled readers for three decades and will fill theaters with young and old converts to Dahlism.

I’ve written before about the Roald Dahl books that have delighted the children of two marriages. But ‘The BFG’ is different from other Dahl classics — it’s a love story. An unlikely love story. And a deeply soulful one. [To buy the paperback from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]

Ten-year-old Sophie lives in a London orphanage. One night, she looks out the window and sees “something very tall and very black and very thin” come down the street and blow a kind of trumpet into the bedroom of some sleeping children. He sees her. And reaches in and takes her.

Each stride he takes is as long as a tennis court. He’s soon in the countryside. And then in a cave. Will he eat her? No. He lives on snozzcumber, a large, vile vegetable. But other giants — Childchewer, Bloodbottler and Fleshlumpeater, all 50 feet tall — eat “human beans,” especially tasty young children.

Sophie’s captor, so scary at first, is the BFG: Big Friendly Giant. He took Sophie because he recognized that she was lonely. He’s lonely too. (In the film, they’ll touch fingertips, you’ll remember “E.T,” and you’ll choke up.)

The BFG mangles language. “Don’t gobblefunk around with words,” he says. He’s reading “Nicholas Nickleby,” by “Dahl’s Chickens.” And he’s completely aware that he’s not always clear: “What I mean and what I say is two different things.” (Children 6-and-over who loved The Book With No Pictures should especially like the film.)

And yet he’s eloquent. When Sophie is horrified that the other giants gobble children, the BFG reminds her: “Ah, but they is not killing their own kind. Human beans is the only animals that is killing their own kind.” He does not understand how adults say they are 50 years old — they’ve been asleep for a third of that time.

And then there’s the heart tug. The BFG collects bad dreams and enhances good ones. “I am hearing all the secret whisperings of the world,” he explains. He hears plants. Trees. Flowers screaming as they’re plucked. He especially hears sorrow and loneliness — and does what he can to replace them with good dreams.

Finally, the BFG loves justice. He wants to save the children who will be eaten. But he is, he says sadly, “a titchy little runty giant.” Oh, but Sophie has a plan. And off they go….

Steven Spielberg was asked why he made this film. “The worse the world gets, the more magic we have to believe in,” he said. “Hope comes from magic and I think that’s what movies can give people. They can give people hope that there will be a reason to fight on to the next day. Hope is everything to me.”

And to me.

And to the millions who will gobble up this movie.