GIGANTIC

US, 2008, 98 minutes, Colour.
Paul Dano, Zoey Deschanel, Edward Asner, Jane Alexander, John Goodman, Zach Galifianakis.
Directed by Matt Aselton.

Does a film have to have a point? If it does, then demanding audiences might wonder what Gigantic was really about, what was its point? On the other hand, if a film can just be and audiences can take it as it is, the relaxed audience can just go with the flow of Gigantic. If the screenplay did mention anything about the title, I must have missed it. Maybe it's just the irony that the film is not gigantic. The director says that he is interested in where reality and absurdity cross. So, there you are.

This is the story of Brian Weathersby, a bed and mattress salesman, played by the rather unsmiling Paul Dano (the silent teenager in Little Miss Sunshine and Daniel Day Lewis's nemesis in There Will be Blood). His life ambition (since the age of eight) has been to adopt a Chinese baby, so part of the film is about that and how it is achieved. He sells a bed to a bumptiously shrewd businessman, played well by John Goodman, who has a willow-the-wisp daughter, Happy (for Harriet), played by Zooey Deschanel. Brian's relationship with Happy and her father's dependence on him is another strand. There are his workmates. There is his family, an ageing patriarch who lives back in the days of doormen for apartment buildings and secretaries who made appointments for managers (Edward Asner) and his wife, Jane Alexander. There are two older brothers. And lurking throughout the film until an untimely and unresolved encounter is a workman in a hard hat who assaults Brian. So, there you are again.

It is all well done and not without interest and entertainment, asking to be accepted just because it is there rather than its proposing to do something or convey a message. Seems as though the eccentricities of human nature are enough.

1.The title, the irony that there was nothing gigantic? A quirky film?

2.The New York settings? The streets and the attacks on Brian? The mattress factory, sales? Apartments, restaurants? The countryside and hunting? Reality and fantasy?

3.The surreal tone of the film? The focus on Brian, in himself, the physical and brutal attacks, his work? The encounters with Al Lolly? With Happy Lolly? His co-workers, the delivery, the taxi for Al Lolly to the doctor, his ambition to adopt a Chinese orphan, the relationship with Happy, with her father? With his own brothers, his own father and mother? The hunt, the fighting with the man and being shot, encountering him in the street, killing him with the knife? The disappearance of this theme completely from the film? The tests for the orphan, phone calls, the orphans’ arrival? A succession of incidents, characters? Brian as morose, the contrast with Happy?

4.The structure of the film, the incidents, one happening after the other – causal effect or not?

5.Al Lolly and his arrival, his assistant, money no object, trying out the beds, the bargain, going to the doctor, his aches? His home, the self-made man? His separation from his wife? Girlfriend? His daughters? His suspicions? Liking Brian, going to the doctor? His hypochondria with the doctor? The meetings, the family, his help?

6.Happy in herself, coming to the factory, going to sleep? The friendship with Brian, the relationship? The outings? The issue of the orphan, her not being able to face it, ringing her mother, her mother’s vagueness on the phone, her relationship with her father, the television program and her relationship with her sister? Brian at the station? Her decision to go to Paris, the fact that the course was cancelled, trying online? Pregnancy, ill? Meeting Brian’s family, the good talk with Brian’s mother on the balcony?

7.Brian’s parents, the father and his old-fashioned style and expectations, the wise mother?

8.His brothers, the brother with the advice, the Japanese and the massage sequence?

9.A point to the film – or just experiencing the characters?