{"id":570,"date":"2011-06-02T11:30:43","date_gmt":"2011-06-02T15:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gadflyonline.com\/wpblog\/?p=570"},"modified":"2012-07-15T19:57:36","modified_gmt":"2012-07-15T23:57:36","slug":"gigantic-its-the-little-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/gigantic-its-the-little-things\/","title":{"rendered":"Gigantic: It’s the Little Things"},"content":{"rendered":"

We all know the story. A quirky young man feels disjointed from the life he lives in, and meets a quirky young woman who feels the same. Despite their obvious differences, they find themselves drawn to one another over and over until they either a) end the film with no hope for a relationship but with a sense of bittersweet reconciliation, or b) end the film with the sense that they are fated to be together, but with minimal smiling. It is this predictability that has led numerous critics to write off many indie movies, including Gigantic<\/em>, which they claim relies so heavily on the indie trope of quirkiness that its eccentricities and alienated characters end up alienating the audience itself. In many ways, they are right. Gigantic<\/em> certainly fits the bill of the indie checklist. Strange, quiet, young male protagonist with random talents and an inability to connect to those who should be loved ones? Check. Experimental drug use? Check. Odd family relationships? Check. Despite its over-qualification for joining the ranks of other indie classics, Gigantic<\/em>\u2019s characters are to most Americans surface-level interesting at best, and many of the film\u2019s idiosyncrasies come off as arbitrary, engineered in a systematic but clumsy attempt to clone indie archetypes. In order to enjoy this film, the audience must pay close attention to subtleties beneath its predictable surface plot and think analytically, which presents a problem for many Americans, who are either incapable or unwilling to do so.<\/p>\n

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Gigantic<\/em> notably stars Paul Dano, Zooey Deschanel, and John Goodman, whose names alone are enough to pique the interest of any indielover. Dano plays warehouse mattress salesman Brian Weathersby, whose greatest aspiration is to adopt a baby from China. After he sells a high-priced mattress to loudmouth businessman Al Lolly (Goodman), he meets Harriet Lolly (Deschanel), whose goofy nickname, Happy, was belittled by many movie critics. Brian and Happy share a sexual but not an emotional connection, though they ought to be able to commiserate in their disconnectedness to their equally dysfunctional families.<\/p>\n

Despite the script\u2019s provisions for glimmers of personality, the characters\u2019 joylessness glosses them over, causing what may have been intended as dry humor to more closely resemble stoicism.\u00a0 Events that would in most people cause mirth, fear, or melancholy only register as blips on Brian\u2019s and Happy\u2019s emotional radar. Skinny-dipping, hallucinogenic mushrooms, and being stalked and violently targeted by a homeless man (uncredited: Zach Galifianakis) do not produce laughter, a zen experience, or terror, respectively. Even when Brian gets his Chinese baby, her coos elicit no more from him than a wan smile.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Because many Americans may have a hard time maintaining interest in Gigantic<\/em>\u2019s zombie-like characters, they must watch the film more consciously than most box-office winners. It takes money to make movies, and every little detail, haphazard as it may seem, cost the producers. Therefore, unless the producers are prone to fiscal irresponsibility, the little oddities that seem careless to an unthinking audience must have some significance. When it was revealed that the homeless man that stalks Brian throughout the film was a figment of his imagination, many people accused Gigantic<\/em> of having a gigantic hole in its story\u2014after all, when the homeless man shot at him earlier in the movie, Brian\u2019s father and brothers heard it. The audience ought to consider what this alleged hole could mean psychologically for Brian. Does he represent Brian\u2019s inner torment, and can his family see his struggle? Big and perhaps unanswerable questions lurk in every nook and cranny of this film. Brian\u2019s friend who works in a lab aims to quantify rats\u2019 helplessness when placed in a life-or-death situation, such as drowning. Who is a rat in this movie, and can sadness really be measured? And the biggest question of all\u2014what is so \u201cgigantic\u201d about this film? Not the storyline, nor the characters\u2019 personalities, nor the setting, nor the baby Brian finally gets in the end\u2014so what is it? Perhaps it is the bigger questions that the movie asks, those heavy questions that all too often get sidestepped or shrouded in the quotidian details of living. Gigantic<\/em> by no means answers those questions, but if the you are willing to pay attention, it may just remind you that those questions are there. America needs to get out of its Pavlovian cinema rut and start thinking again.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We all know the story. A quirky young man feels disjointed from the life he lives in, and meets a quirky young woman who feels the same. Despite their obvious differences, they find themselves drawn to one another over and over until they either a) end the film with no hope for a relationship but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":572,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[118,102,98,110,111,112,109],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=570"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3047,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570\/revisions\/3047"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}