Fest Track On Sirk TV Film Review: THE GIANTS [Locarno Film Festival 2021 - Virtual]

The aspect of pushing possibilities of perception always comes down to the actual people involved. In "I Giganti" [The Giants], it is about a circle of friends brought together by social ineptitude and a stronger altering substance in drugs. While the drugs seem more recreational, their identity and problems of life start to move slightly more out of control. Some of the group's lives are literally empty while some have been stripped of their possibility either by their own hand or by circumstance. There can be joy in certain moments but mostly criticism and interpretation. The owner of the house is mostly setting stage for the melee of sorts to come in the first shot. The movie plays to the idea of comedy with an underlying dread but doesn't truly speak to it untitl the conclusion. It is very simple and yet undeniably stark and blatant film in its metaphor. People do speak in half-truths with one of the 5 actually knowing what is going on and yet not admitting to the actual reality.

This approach, of course, makes one question the narrator and what is being said. One of the characters, a father who has lost his daughter though his strained relationship with his ex wife, is the slow bleeding heart of the story ut also the catalyst. One sequence where he tells a story of the breakdown of his life in shadow is undeniably powerful and yet the irony of an earlier scene about listening is what makes the set up work. Of course, everyone is discombobulated by what they have been imbibing but it likely makes their true selves emerge in the bigger context. The owner of the house who mumbles "dunno" to many questions is the soul of the story but he in fact is an aimless wander who never found his path or purpose in life. The metaphor of passing funerals among the farmland this house seems to exist in is stark as is a trip outside to see a comet pass behind the sun that no one ever truly sees. Thus the story of "The Giants" is one marked in the aspect that no one truly has control except those most marred by their inadequacies. B+

By Tim Wassberg