(POST 34) Macro elements of film form

Macro elements of film form

The Selfish Giant

The Selfish Giant represents the poor social group. It is an extraordinary account of the hard life and times of the playwright which pushed at the boundaries of documentary film-making.

It tells the story of two young boys from Bradford who turn to the scrap metal trade to support their struggling families. Yet scratch the surface and those same cross-generic fluidities are still present, conjuring something that exists in the strange netherworld between archetypal fable and cold unforgiving fact.

I feel the representation of the characters and their families is done extremely well. After watching the film I had empathy for their situations. Their families, housing, clothes and others opinions of them all adds to the way poverty is looked on from society.

Genre

Drama, British social realist film. It is clear as some elements are of a dramatic tone, yet others show the real affects of poverty and horror which occurs in real life. the mise-en-scene of costume and setting all show that it is about some of the poorest places in Bradford.

 The name of the film is based on an Eden-like garden where in endless winter when the titular giant walls it off from playful children. Barnard's version is more political, a portrait of a post-industrial landscape in which selfishness has become an ideology, with children once again marginalised to devastating effect. Inspired by the real-life story of a young lad, Matty, whom she met while filming The Arbor and who had been "scrapping" since the age of 11, Barnard describes putting Wilde's text aside to concentrate on her immediate subject only to find the material circling back upon itself, becoming once again a story about the "wounds of love". This fusion creates a film which takes its title and central theme from the fantasy of Wilde's fairy-tale while keeping its feet firmly rooted in the earthy poetry of verité.

Narrative

The short story “The Selfish Giant” by Oscar Wilde is a third-person narrative, but it is hard to tell whether the narrator has limited or unlimited knowledge on the events. The story is told in retrospect, meaning that the narrated events have already happened.

Audience

The audience age rating is 15, I feel this is appropriate as the film does show some hard issues and sensitive ones too. The film includes smoking, violence, abuse, drugs, alcohol and hurt. There is also

 frightening & intense Scenes where the young boys are shown scrapping metal for money to help their families survive. The scrap yard man they trade with is harsh, often dishonest, and sometimes violent. One of the boys grows to resent his treatment of them and begins to steal. A foal is also shown laying dead near a fallen power beam. It is implied that one of the young boys may have used the animal to test whether a metal power beam he wanted to scrap was live, and this greatly upsets another boy who discovers the dead animal near the beam. This may be upsetting to young audiences.

The film has a grim tone throughout. The film is full of shouting, cursing, crying and delinquency in both adults and children. Many of the characters live in extreme poverty, desperation, and hopelessness.Young boys grapple with themes of affection and survival, uncertain of whether it is possible to hold both in the harsh setting of their lives. The entire script is littered with profanity, including children telling adults to, "Fuck off," and using just about every curse word in the English language, including several anatomical terms.