The Selfish Giant

Statutory Warning – If you don’t understand the way upcountry Brits speak  English then The Selfish Giant is a movie you should watch with subtitles only.  I am not an expert in language and cannot tell you what the exact accent was but it would suffice to say that I was struggling to keep up with what the cast was speaking.  Sadly, the MAMI team didn’t think it worthwhile to keep them on; TSG is a really good movie.

Screened in the Director’s fortnight at Cannes, TSG went onto collect several awards over 2013.  It is the story of two 13 year old boys Arbor (Conner Chapman) and his best friend Swifty (Shaun Thomas).  Arbor is a rebellious boy – a bit too much for his own good.  He is constantly being pulled up at school for a variety of issues least of which would include abusing his teachers.

Over time, he finds himself out of school and with his only friend Swifty, rambles through town doing nothing for a while till they meet Kitten (Sean Gilder).  Kitten is your local scrap dealer who gets our two boys rambling around town again but this time with some sense of purpose.  Our boys get a horse drawn cart courtesy kitten and they spend their time picking (sometimes stealing) scrap from people’s yards.

What the story actually revolves around is Kitten’s not so legal part of the scrap business which has to do with high tension wires.  Things take a turn for the nasty when the boys stumble upon this business and find out that it is a way of making money much faster than scrap.  But what they are unfamiliar with is the concept of “no such thing as a free lunch”.

TSG is a movie that may not have too much commercial value for a variety of reasons.  It deals with a topic that may or may not be relevant to the entire world.  Of course there is the aspect of language that I mentioned earlier.  Then there is the aspect of pace which will not go down too well with most “commercial” movie watchers.  You will need to have a lot of patience – even for a 90 minute movie.

Everything else is very good.  Juries cannot be questioned on all the awards given to Conner Chapman for his performance as the incorrigible Arbor.  Clio Barnard is already rated as one of the better directors of our time.  Credit for keeping the movie to the tolerable 91 minutes goes to Nick Fenton.  In all, TSG is a great movie but watch it only if you believe you have the patience to sit through serious arty cinema.  7 on 10.

Watch the trailer at http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi84781081/?ref_=tt_ov_vi