The Selfish Giant
Director Clio Barnard's latest film The Selfish Giant is a story that follows 2 13 year old boys seeking fortune in Bradford by getting involved with a local scrap dealer and criminal. This leads to a devastating fate of one of the boys, as he ends up being electrocuted trying to help the protagonist steal some copper wire to pay back a debt to the scrap dealer.
Performance: I personally do not often empathize with sad things. What's a sad story to most just doesn't tug at my heart strings. But that doesn't mean the acting was lost on me during this film. The lead role, Conner Chapman, who played Arbor, did a very good job, especially for a young actor, of portraying a working class child who has some kind of mental struggle as well as being a working class citizen in Bradford. Sean Gilder as Kitten also constantly looked appropriate to his character's personality. His constant scowl and annoyed nature was always very apparent and so Sean Gilder deserves some credit for being able to keep up that facial expression nearly the entire movie.
Mise-en-scene: The costumes were also very appropriate as not a single person in the entire movie looked proper or more than working class, and considering the area and financial status of the characters in the movie, this was purposeful. The lighting was also used at terrific points in the movie. For example after Swifty died and Arbor was sitting in the rain outside his house. It was dark, and while that may have just been the weather, I doubt it was simply coincidence that they just happened to shoot on that particular day when it was cloudy, dark and rainy.
Performance: I personally do not often empathize with sad things. What's a sad story to most just doesn't tug at my heart strings. But that doesn't mean the acting was lost on me during this film. The lead role, Conner Chapman, who played Arbor, did a very good job, especially for a young actor, of portraying a working class child who has some kind of mental struggle as well as being a working class citizen in Bradford. Sean Gilder as Kitten also constantly looked appropriate to his character's personality. His constant scowl and annoyed nature was always very apparent and so Sean Gilder deserves some credit for being able to keep up that facial expression nearly the entire movie.
Mise-en-scene: The costumes were also very appropriate as not a single person in the entire movie looked proper or more than working class, and considering the area and financial status of the characters in the movie, this was purposeful. The lighting was also used at terrific points in the movie. For example after Swifty died and Arbor was sitting in the rain outside his house. It was dark, and while that may have just been the weather, I doubt it was simply coincidence that they just happened to shoot on that particular day when it was cloudy, dark and rainy.
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