Sunday 23 February 2020

I Kill Giants - a film review.

'I Kill Giants', a film directed by Anders Walter 2018. Stars Madison Wolfe, Zoe Saldana, Imogen Poots and Sydney Wade

This film is about a young secondary school attending girl called Barbara constructing an elaborate fantasy that helps her deal with an unbearable situation in her life. 
This makes her fairly unbearable also and we see people trying to help her and some girls being nasty to her in the general odious ways of school bullies.

Unfortunately it would be difficult to watch this movie without having already grasped something of the plot from the cover or the publicity.
Therefore the ending isn't entirely surprising although not completely obvious.
Also the plot hinges on no one mentioning facts that it's unlikely no one at the school young Barbara attends would know and mention.

The acting is fine and the special effects of frightening giants are impressively gothic. The details are imaginatively peculiar and the brooding landscape is dramatic.

One scene moved me to tears and then I felt the ending was unrealistic - the director's own escape into a comforting optimism.

It's an interesting foray into using imagery to convey emotions - film being so suited to indicating visions and craziness but so rarely used for this.

I call it a brave attempt to tackle how the mind can invent to protect a person from pain that is too much to stand.

Maybe that's why we have religion persisting in a scientific era but Barbara constructs her own mythology.

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