Continuing my series of film reviews written for the Steven Spielberg Film Society, past and present, here’s a look at Spielberg’s take on Roald Dahl’s children’s book The BFG, which opens July 1, as Spielberg’s 29th feature. This marks a first for me because, normally, when I cover a film for Cinefex, I’m reporting just the facts of how the film is made, not a critical appraisal. But the Powers That Be at Disney have authorized me to publish my relatively-spoiler-free review a month ahead of the release:

All the Secret Whisperings of the World

Film review by Joe Fordham (May 2016)

This review is based purely on seeing Steven Spielberg’s film, The BFG. I am beginning interviews with the filmmakers soon, covering how this film was made from a visual effects point of view for Cinefex magazine. So I’m writing this the day after seeing a press preview of the film at the Directors Guild of America, before getting into all of the nuts and bolts, to try for

some objectivity because, I confess, I do become invested in what I write about for work. And I loved this film.

Roald Dahl has occupied a warm and cozy corner of my heart since my primary school teacher, Mr. Finnegan, read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I’ll never forget leaning my head on the desk on a warm summer afternoon and imagining the taste of chocolate in my mouth as he read to the class. I loved the old movie, too, although I understand Roald Dahl was not a fan. I was very much less enthused in the Tim Burton remake. But there have been good Roald Dahl adaptations, in my book. The BBC did a rousing version of Danny the Champion of the World starring Jeremy Irons. The Tales of the Unexpected ITV series was, for me, better than The Twilight Zone. And Nicolas Roeg, amazingly, did a spectacular version of The Witches in the early 90s.

Spielberg’s The BFG betters all of those. I gather he drew his inspiration from having read the book to his children. It was kismet, too, that he managed to obtain Melissa Mathison, to write his screenplay adaptation. As she did with E.T. and The Black Stallion, Mathison really caught the tone of the child hero, in this case the abandoned and fearless little orphan girl, Sophie, played with a lilting native Northern English accent by Ruby Barnhill. Mathison

always had a musical ear for naturalistic dialog, never fussy, always just right, and she was dealing with some choice raw material here.

Dahl’s book is particularly delightful in its wordplay in the land of giants, where 50-foot-tall monsters lumber about and bully their 24-foot runt, the BFG, who mumbles and bumbles with inside-out vocabulary just this side of incomprehensible. Human beings are ‘human beans,’ crocodiles are ‘crockadowndillies’ because, as the BFG laments, ‘Words is oh such a twitch-tickling problem to me all my life.’ Mark Rylance makes a feast of the delivery, and engenders his gangling giant with uncanny grace and gentility.

Spielberg cannily plays to children’s primal fears in the early moments of the film, where he portrays the BFG as a nightmarish leviathan flitting in and out of misty London streets, as a giant bony hand scoops Sophie from her orphanage bed, like the little boy grabbed by a tree 34 years ago in Poltergeist. He keeps the BFG mysterious, seen from Sophie’s point of view bundled in her bed-sheet as she swings about in the giant’s grip. Enormous knives made of airplane fuselage parts slam into revolting vegetables, and thump into the giant’s chopping

block. But when he reveals Dahl’s twist that this giant is a vegetarian, we see Sophie’s fear melt away. This is a peculiar twisted pretzel of a giant, rendered in wonderful scrawny detail and convincing mass and gravity by Weta Digital. But Rylance’s gentle smile lights the screen. He has a grace and nobility that is almost Lincoln-esque at times, and it’s a wonder to behold the chemistry between Sophie and the BFG, despite their relative scales of a mouse and a tree.

The adaptation differs from the book here and there, but never in spirit; the embellishments are visual and complimentary, especially Spielberg’s treatment of the BFG’s occupation as a chef of dreams that he hunts with his gigantic, ever-flapping ears and harvests with a tent-sized butterfly net. Without giving too much away, what we have here is a distant cousin of the little red ‘whoosh’ that chases the UFOs about in Close Encounters, and Spielberg is in his element as he guides the audience through enchanted set-pieces, showing us a fairy-tale visualization of what A.I. referred to as ‘the place where dreams are born.’ Cinematographer Janusz Kaminski and maestro John Williams are in particularly fine form with their interplays of light and music in these scenes.

But all that’s in the book, and Melissa Mathison only adds flourishes, including some hijinks with the bigger giants, and one major subplot that expands the BFG’s melancholy back-story. The latter embellishment results in a touching exchange between Sophie and the BFG late in the film, before a big action climax, which again I won’t spoil here – a grace note, really, but a telling one for Spielberg, who is a mature enough story-teller now to

know just when to tap the brakes as the narrative is hurtling toward its climax. It’s a touching moment that reinforces this as Sophie’s story, and a story about a little girl finding courage and learning to listen to her heart.

We also, gloriously, learn a lot about farts. Some critics have ‘poo-poo’ed this as juvenile (ha ha), but it’s true to the source material, and magnificently so. Again, not to be spoiled, but children and adults will gain new words for the lexicon of BFG-isms in ‘frobscottle’ green beverages and the resultant ‘whizzpopper’ emissions (watch out for those corgis). And anyone who has ever balked at eating vegetables, child or adult, will also delight in the putrescent abomination that is the ‘snozzcumber’ – perhaps to join the catalogue of Spielbergian nightmare images, alongside the shark in Jaws and the T-rex in Jurassic Park?

Kudos go to production designers Rick Carter and Robert Stromberg, who no doubt I will be learning a lot more about as I dive into my Cinefex story. The richness of detail built into this world is a miracle of design – from the post-War British cars trundling around England, to the playful bric-a-brac littering the giant world, including a Spitfire fighter plane wing as

kitchen stool. They instantly set the tone for this storybook world that is somewhat related to ours, but playfully Spielberg never tips his hand, alluding to a 1980s U.S. presidency, perhaps as a nod to the era when Dahl’s book was first published.

Spielberg’s film ends with a dedication, ‘To our Melissa,’ reference to Melissa Mathison, who succumbed to neuroendrocrine cancer last November, at age 65. Roald Dahl’s book has a sad inscription, ‘For Olivia,’ referring to his eldest daughter who lost her life to encephalitis, at age seven. It is poignant that Dahl’s warm-hearted story and Spielberg’s splendiferous movie were touched by sadness and loss. But it is also part of their appeal that, behind the whizzpoppers and trogglehumpers, there are deeper themes of courage and acceptance that give a haunting resonance to this charming, funny fairytale.

The Cinefex story on The BFG will appear in October.

DGA BFG photo by Patti McMahon

BFG images © Walt Disney Pictures / Amblin