the giant movie review 2017

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Review: the giant.

The film is a canny portrait of a society continuing to wrestle with its ineffaceable cruelty.

One of the many strengths of The Giant is that it pays homage to the everyday courage of the physically and mentally disabled without ever condescending to their struggles. There’s no patronizing, self-congratulatory pity on display throughout this film, which is both a sensitive account of one handicapped man’s efforts to lead a normal life, and a grotesque comedy of pain that exposes the cruelty that lingers in modern European society.

Set in contemporary Sweden, the film begins as a kind of faux documentary of a local pétanque club and its eccentric members. Pétanque is a variation of lawn bowling, and thus a modification of an already niche sport. In choosing this particular game around which to craft his story, writer-director Johannes Nyholm emphasizes the outsider status of his characters, particularly the film’s protagonist, Rikard (Christian Andrén), an autistic and severely deformed man whose life revolves around pétanque.

The Giant ’s authenticity is bolstered by Andrén’s performance, the kind of fully immersed acting that makes audiences forget that they’re watching a work of fiction. Made up to resemble a kind of miniature, one-eyed Elephant Man, Andrén, who’s himself physically disabled, seems to have channeled his own experiences in bringing Rikard so painfully and realistically to life.

The film is both an example of the sports-underdog genre and a parody of it. The plot traces Rikard’s unlikely road to the Nordic Championship of pétanque, where he and his teammate and best friend, Roland (Johan Kylén), eventually compete against the seemingly unbeatable reigning champs, a couple of arrogant Danish hipsters. While it has all the trappings of the aforementioned genre, the film also subverts the sentimentality and saccharine morality of similar works with its bawdy humor and refusal to provide a tidy, heartwarming conclusion to the story’s conflict. The film never feels manipulative because its tearjerker setup opts to ennoble the protagonist rather than use him to simply elicit our sympathy.

Some of the film’s minor characters are drawn in broad strokes, but for the most part both the handicapped and normally abled are shown to be capable of an equally wide range of emotions and actions. This is of a piece with the generous quality of Nyholm’s sometimes vulgar and even brutal humor, which stress the painful realities that form the background for the disabled characters’ indomitable spirits. There’s something at once funny and devastating about the bird that crashes into a window while trying to escape from the home of Rikard’s depressed mother, as well as the accidental blow from a teammate’s ball to the back of Rikard’s head that nearly ends his pétanque career. In their unexpectedness, these moments follow the formulas of classic slapstick while reminding us of the characters’ all too human frailty.

The club’s decision to curtail Rikard’s participation in the championship after the accidental blow to his head and the casual cruelty that he faces when he ventures outside of the club or his living facility seem to point to a tension within Sweden’s social welfare system. In his difficulty to communicate his desires and anxieties, Rikard embodies all those in Sweden who, for whatever reason, have difficulty speaking for themselves. The leaders of the pétanque club becomes a synecdoche for the socialist government in their effort to protect Rikard only to nearly rob him of his life’s sole passion in doing so. The bullies that plague Rikard, from the volleyball players that share the arena during the Nordic Championship of pétanque to the drunken amateur pétanque players that mock his disabilities, embody society’s inability to always protect the weak and needy. In revealing the downsides of both too much and not enough government interference in Rikard’s life, the film shows itself to be a shrewd political commentary as well as a canny portrait of a society continuing to wrestle with its ineffaceable cruelty.

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Early in the picture, Olivia, the best friend of the central character, Charlotte, is about to jump in a lake, or large pond. The two have just graduated from high school in a semi-rural southern town, and they’re goofing off with some male pals. Contemplating the water and the latening hour, Olivia says, “It’s been a while since I been swimming in the dark. Who knows what nasty things are in there.”

Here and in many more moments, “The Giant,” written, directed, and edited by David Raboy , and adapted from his 2012 short of the same name, catches itself on a hook of mystery and dread that leaves a mark. And in many other moments, the movie hits snags that speak to its larger ambitions, ambitions the filmmaker can’t quite realize.

Prior to the swim, Charlotte ( Odessa Young ) is caught in a dream that’s also a memory, of her mother’s suicide a year before. At the swimming site their guy pals tease them—one actually threatens Charlotte with a lit firework to convince her to get in the water—and what seems like sophomoric hijinks carries real menace with it. Later on in the sweaty night there’s word of a young woman’s murder in a nearby town. Still later there’s word of the murder of a girl Charlotte just saw at a diner.

To make matters weirder, suddenly Charlotte’s former boyfriend, Joe ( Ben Schnetzer ) turns up. He has not been around since Charlotte’s mother’s suicide. And he’s got some things to say. After Charlotte tells him “You’re back from the dead,” he asks her if she has, of late, heard a thumping sound, one familiar to them both from the bad time. “That was the most painful week of my life,” Charlotte says, in protest. “I heard them last night,” Joe says. They’re driving around now in Joe’s pickup, enveloped in darkness. “That giant,” he continues.

The movie is suffused with enigmatic touches like this, but Raboy, as he increasingly uses voiceover in a way that’s very much Malick, can lose hold of the distinction between mystery and affectation. When Joe speaks of enduring “all this heat, all this sweat, all this pain, until we melt together again,” I was suddenly reminded of the old Monty Python sketch in which Terry Gilliam ’s military lawyer stands and exclaims, “Sorry but my client has become pretentious!”

And the film’s temporal distortions and off-ramps at first seem to dilute and diffuse the movie’s serial-killer storyline, until one realizes that it’s actually just disguising the fact that the storyline doesn’t have much there there to begin with. Rex (P.J. Marshall) as Charlotte’s father, an officer of the law who mainly sits in shadows and mopes, is ineffectual on purpose, I suppose, but his inertia is so overstated it’s almost funny, and not in a good way.

Nevertheless, Raboy manages to pull off several galvanic cinematic effects even as his scenario yields little more than exasperation. There’s enough raw talent on display here that I’m looking forward to his next picture nevertheless.

Glenn Kenny

Glenn Kenny was the chief film critic of Premiere magazine for almost half of its existence. He has written for a host of other publications and resides in Brooklyn. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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The Giant (2020)

Odessa Young as Charlotte

Ben Schnetzer as Joe

Jack Kilmer as Will

Madelyn Cline as Olivia

Danny Ramirez as Brady

P.J. Marshall as Rex

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A story about the world's tallest man, this is an unsettling Basque-language period drama focused on sibling rivalry.

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A young girl grows endlessly, stumbles upon a liquid that releases the darkest sides of herself, and eventually dissolves into the music of the universe.

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Martin Eleizegi is an unwilling conscript in the First Carlist War. While fighting, he is injured and loses the use of his right arm. He returns to his family's small farm in the village of Altzo in the Basque Country, where he discovers his younger brother, Joaquin, has grown into a giant. Martin, longing to emigrate to America, sees the commercial opportunity in marketing the "tallest man on Earth." The brothers travel around Europe, despite Joaquin's increasing discomfort of being a freak attraction. Joaquin measures himself each night and is horrified that he continues to grow well into his twenties, and suffers from increasing aches and pains. He suspects that the condition is terminal.

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Need to watch ' The Giant ' in the comfort of your own home? Tracking down a streaming service to buy, rent, download, or view the Aitor Arregi-directed movie via subscription can be a challenge, so we here at Moviefone want to do the work for you. Below, you'll find a number of top-tier streaming and cable services - including rental, purchase, and subscription alternatives - along with the availability of 'The Giant' on each platform when they are available. Now, before we get into the fundamentals of how you can watch 'The Giant' right now, here are some specifics about the Irusoin, Moriarti Produkzioak, Kowalski Films history flick. Released October 20th, 2017, 'The Giant' stars Ramon Agirre , Eneko Sagardoy , Joseba Usabiaga , Aia Kruse The PG-13 movie has a runtime of about 1 hr 54 min, and received a user score of 66 (out of 100) on TMDb, which collated reviews from 135 experienced users. What, so now you want to know what the movie's about? Here's the plot: "Having fought in the First Carlist War, Martin returns to his family farm in Gipuzkoa only to find that his younger brother, Joaquín, towers over him in height. Convinced that everyone will want to pay to see the tallest man on Earth, the siblings set out on a long trip all over Europe, during which ambition, money and fame will forever change the family’s fate. A story based on true events." 'The Giant' is currently available to rent, purchase, or stream via subscription on Apple iTunes, Google Play Movies, Amazon Video, and YouTube .

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‘The Giant’ Review

David Raboy's debut has style to spare, but holds the viewer at a frustrating distance.

By Andrew Barker

Andrew Barker

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First-time feature director-writer-editor David Raboy certainly knows how to conjure up an atmosphere. Expanding his own short of the same title, Raboy’s elliptical psychological thriller “ The Giant ” gives us the story of a small Southern town beset by a killing spree, yet his real interest is in the constant changes in barometric pressure: the heaviness of the sticky, buggy Georgia air; the gathering storm that builds and builds just over the horizon for the entirety of the film. But he lays the atmosphere on so think that it threatens to suffocate everything within, and the film holds its audience at such a remove that eventually you stop trying to connect.

Containing little in the way of linear plot, “The Giant” is always willing to leave its viewers in the dark, often quite literally: much of the film (shot on 35 mm by Eric Yue) takes place in grainy darkness, and Raboy is just as likely to fill frames with smears of light and blurry figures crowding the foreground as he is with clearly defined images. Dialogue follows suit, with characters spitting out fragments of cryptic, unfinished thoughts and half-remembered reveries in low whispers. In small doses, his filmmaking style exudes confidence, and there’s something intriguing about the teasing way he leads us around the furthest edges of his story. But Raboy gives us so little to hang onto – be it an arresting image, a palpable touch of the uncanny, or a moment of real tension – that it gets harder and harder to want to follow him.

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Charlotte (Odessa Young) is a 17-year-old spending one last sweltering summer in her hometown before heading off to college. Charlotte’s mother recently committed suicide, and the death hangs heavy over her as she tries to enjoy some quality time with best friend Olivia (Madelyn Cline) and the local boys hanging around the unnamed town’s run-down diners and lakes.

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The story kicks into gear when Charlotte’s mysterious boyfriend Joe (Ben Schnetzer) returns to town after an unexplained absence, and his nocturnal appearances in Charlotte’s life start to draw her away from her other friends. Again and again, the two drive in circles through winding country roads, talk in circles about their own dimly articulated past, and tend to have passing encounters with young women, some of whom bearing a resemblance to Charlotte, who will later turn up murdered.

This spate of killings is, strangely, largely a background issue for the film, with all of the violence occurring safely offscreen. And even when the body count rises so high that the city imposes a curfew, the focus remains solely on Charlotte and her steady disconnection from reality. Is Charlotte in danger? Is Joe the killer? Is Charlotte? Is any of this really happening? Raboy isn’t interested in providing many direct answers, and even as the film builds to a climactic end-of-summer party, it drifts further into dreamlike abstraction.

Appearing in every scene, Young certainly manages to command the screen, though she isn’t given too many different notes to hit, with her performance confined to a narrow range of ambiguously haunted disorientation. As Olivia, Cline is responsible for providing virtually all of “The Giant’s” scant bursts of liveliness, humor and spontaneity, and the film’s pulse quickens with almost every scene she’s in. Hardly anyone else has the chance to make much of an impression.

Raboy certainly has style to spare, and as much as a viewer might be frustrated by some of his choices, there’s always a clear intention behind them. One just hopes his next film will let us in on what those intentions are.

Reviewed at UTA screening room, Los Angeles, August 22, 2019. (In Toronto Film Festival - Discovery)

• Production: A Camera Ready Pictures presentation of a Bogie Films, Vixens, Extra A production. Produced by Dennis Masel, Daniel Dewes, Rachael Fung, Gary Farkas, Clement Lepoutre, Olivier Muller.
• Crew: Directed, written, edited by David Raboy. Camera (color): Eric Yue. Music: Ari Balouzian.
• With: Odessa Young, Ben Schnetzer, Jack Kilmer, Madelyn Cline, Danny Ramirez, PJ Marshall

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• A story about the world's tallest man, this is an unsettling Basque-language period drama focused on sibling rivalry.
• Having fought in the First Carlist War, Martin returns to his family farm in Gipuzkoa only to find that his younger brother, Joaquín, towers over him in height. Convinced that everyone will want to pay to see the tallest man on Earth, the siblings set out on a long trip all over Europe, during which ambition, money and fame will forever change the family's fate. A story based on true events. — AnonymousB

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Eye For Film >> Movies >> Giant (2017) Film Review

Reviewed by: Amber Wilkinson

One of the success stories of the 2014 San Sebastian Film Festival - and by extension, the festival's long-term commitment to Basque film - was Flowers (Loreak), an elegant, slow-burn drama about connected lives that was the first Basque film to play in the competition section of the festival and went on to be Spain's nomination for the Foreign Language Oscar.

Aitor Arregi and Jon Garaño, writing with Jose Mari Goenaga and Andoni de Carlos, choose a much bigger canvas for their follow-up film Giant (Handia), an historical drama based on the true story of the son of a farmer who suffered from gigantism. Beginning in the 1830s, Martin (Joseba Usabiaga, who British audiences might recognise as the lead in romcom Pikadero ) and his brother Joaquin (Eneko Sagardoy) are living an unremarkable life on a farm on the outskirts of Altzo. As the First Carlist civil war tightens its grip, Martin is drafted and soon finds himself in woodland skirmishes. Arregi and Garaño, benefit from the talents of notable Basque cinematographer Javier Agirre (Loreak, Amama ), and prove adept at the fight scenes, grounding the hand-to-hand combat in blood and mud, before Martin is left too injured to fight.

This early part of the film is essentially used to set up Martin's feelings of isolation from his family and, when he returns, he discovers his younger brother has grown to an enormous size. Initially torn by a promise to his brother and dreams of leaving for America, Martin soon comes to see that Joaquin's size could prove to be a boon for the family coffers and sets up a tour with the help of an impresario, dragging him places under cloak of darkness - or simply under a cloak - before making him 'perform' for cash.

There's no missing the themes of the film, namely a sense of identity and the ability and inevitability - on-the-nose scripting bashes us on the head with this latter point at regular intervals. The former is underlined culturally by Joaquin's use of the Basque language, while Martin desperately tries to integrate and ingratiate himself with the Castilian Spaniards and beyond. Joaquin is also shown to be troubled by the nature of his predicament which means his body is continually changing around him, never letting him settle as 'himself'. There are shades of Frankenstein's monster about this as well, as Joaquin struggles to reconcile his sense of self with the myth that has been created for him by Martin.

The adapt to survive element of the script also speaks to the way that cultural identity risks being lost in the race to globalisation - an issue that is as fundamental to Spanish politics and many other smaller regions in Europe today as it ever was. The filmmakers are quick to underline that Martin wants to go to America, not necessarily in search of a better life, but in search of a different one, and the tension this causes is partially what drives the film.

Technically speaking, the package is impressive, with the height of Joaquin always believable, although away from the battlefield the historical elements have a stagey feel. There's also a reliance on symbolism - such as a wolf motif - that remains undeveloped. The story, built on the shifting relationship between the two brothers, holds considerable interest, even though the plot starts to ramble. As the pair of them find themselves on a tour of Europe and Arregi and Garaño lose emotional focus in favour of a postcard tour, which means the places may change but the content of the encounters remains largely the same. The filmmakers have certainly achieved a much bigger picture, in terms of look and theme, but it lacks many of the smaller unexpected humanistic details that made Loreak so memorable.

Director: Aitor Arregi , Jon Garano

Writer: Aitor Arregi, Jon Garano, Jose Mari Goenaga

Starring: Eneko Sagardoy, Joseba Usabiaga, Iñigo Aranburu, Ramon Agirre, Aia Kruse

Runtime: 114 minutes

Country: Spain

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‘giant’ (‘handia’): film review.

A Basque-language historical fable about a man who never stops growing, 'Giant' took 10 awards at last weekend's Spanish Goya awards.

By Jonathan Holland

Jonathan Holland

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Jose Mari Goenaga and Jon Garano’s last film, Flowers , was one of the gems of 2014, a beautifully crafted meditation on love and mortality that became the first Basque film to be nominated as Spain’s candidate for the Academy Awards. Anyone hoping for more of the same will be surprised by Giant,  a stately historical drama based on a true Basque story that plays out like an elegant but simple fable.

Technically superb,  Giant is hobbled by a script that plods earnestly along like the giant at its center, and like him it starts to limp soon after midpoint. Though it represents a new technical high point for Basque cinema, and is an authentic visual feast, the movie strains too obviously at magnificence, subtlety sacrificed to sweep. Despite walking off with Goyas for music, script, editing, photography and six more,  Giant  is unlikely to raise interest much beyond fests with an interest in its cultural value.

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An unnecessary voiceover about mutability tops and tails the film, and is best forgotten; far better to have gone straight to the discovery by Martin ( Joseba Usabiaga ) that the bones of his dead brother Joaquin ( Eneko Sagardoy ) have gone missing from their coffin. Martin and Joaquin are working for their father, Antonio (Ramon Agirre ), at their family’s mountainside farm in the stunning  Altxo region of the Basque country in the 1830s — until the army turns up and demands that one of the sons enlists. Martin goes, leaving behind the possibility of a relationship with Maria ( Aia Kruse).

Three years and a couple of creditably shot battle scenes later, Martin returns home with dreams of moving to America, only to find that Joaquin has grown into a giant, towering over those around him. The moments leading up to their reunion, in the shadows of a church, are strikingly done, like many of the film’s carefully crafted scenes. Having returned a streetwise man, Martin figures that the family could make some money out of his sibling, and decides to take the Joaquin show out on the road along with business manager Jose Antonio ( Inigo Aranburu ), whose character is a surplus to dramatic requirements.

Here  Giant  enters its Elephant Man phase. Having met the Spanish queen, who, in one of just a couple of wryly humorous scenes, wonders whether Joaquin’s size is proportional and asks him to take off his clothes, the trio goes abroad, where Joaquin is seen as little more than a freak: One surreal scene, where he meets some potential love interest, takes place at a misty Stonehenge, and it’s from about there that things start to limp. This is especially true of a couple of scenes that feel as though they were included only because they’re rooted in historical fact.

One of the pleasure of the beautifully structured Flowers was the way it shifted between perspectives and times, intensifying viewer understanding as it did so. A little of that would have gone a long way with  Giant , which, a couple of flashbacks and dream sequences apart, advances fairly predictably, with only a few surprises along the road. Events are presented episodically, without the plot complicating in any interesting way and with the characters developing very little — although, of course, Joaquin continues to develop, memorably complaining at one point that he can “hear his bones growing.” The effect is to make the whole thing feel airless.

Giant  could be about many things, and one of them would have Joaquin as a metaphor of the Basque country itself — an outsider region that always has had to work too hard, as Joaquin does, to achieve respect and normality. But as drama at the human level, it’s less convincing, with only Martin and Joaquin rounded out to any degree and their relationship, which one would expect to be complex and troubled, not in fact particularly well shaded: The dialogue between them rarely strays from the deja vu. Although by the end we feel some sympathy for Joaquin, by virtue of Sagardoy’s sensitive portrayal, Martin’s exploitation of him is never really entered into. Much time is spent looking at Martin as he sadly, soulfully watches Joaquin, but very little of Martin, the film’s central character, is available to us.

Giant is an extremely handsome piece of filmmaking, whose visuals have been unfailingly composed with a painter’s eye for detail: Some of the interiors, with their shadows, soft sunlight and dust motes, might have been modeled on Vermeer, and the rangy landscape shots exploit to stunning effect the tonal contrasts between land and sky. But only once or twice is all the beauty transformed into true poetry, as for example in a stunning sequence, backed by Pascal  Gaigne’s  subtly affecting score, of Joaquin swimming. It’s a tantalizing suggestion of what this too-conservative film could have been.

Production companies: Irusoin , Aundiya , Moriarti , Kowalski Films Cast: Joseba Usabiaga , Eneko Sagardoy , Inigo Aranburu , Ramon Agirre , Aia Kruse Directors: Jose Mari Goenaga , Jon Garano Screenwriters: Andoni De Carlos, Aitor Arregi , Jose Mari Goenaga , Jon Garano Producers: Xabier Berzosa , Inaki Gomez, Inigo Obeso Executive producers: Fernando Larrondo , Jose Mari Goenaga , Nerea Rodríguez , Koldo Zuazua Director of photography: Javi Agirre Erauso Art director: Mikel Serrano Costume designer: Saioa Lara Editor: Laurent Dufreche , Raul Lopez Composer: Pascal Gaigne Sales: Film Factory Entertainment

114 minutes

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Saturday, November 14, 2020

The giant: movie review.

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‘the giant’ (2019) review: psychological mystery, or just mysterious.

The Giant  is a story about the last summer that Charlotte (Odessa Young) and her friends will spend together after graduating from high school. The film centers on Charlotte, a girl with an unclear future and an even more mysterious past. The beginning of The Giant shows us how Charlotte is consumed with grief for her deceased mother, and distracted by the fact that her boyfriend has gone missing. Despite these traumas, Charlotte’s best friend Olivia (Madelyn Cline) does her best to make sure that her friend enjoys their last summer together. 

We’re given lots of scenes of American teenage summertime revelry: swimming, partying, sneaking drinks, lighting off fireworks. While most of the teenagers are clearly having a good time, Charlotte is serious and withdrawn; it’s obvious that she’s more focused on her thoughts. Charlotte and her friends are hanging out at a dock one night when they hear a scream. Her friends brush it off, saying maybe it’s a fox. Charlotte’s concerned, but her suspicion really sets in when she runs into her old friends Brady and Daphne at a diner. Brady’s covered in dirt, and seeing Charlotte examining him, he explains that he hit a deer. All Daphne says is “she was pregnant”. Other than this, Daphne doesn’t utter a single word during the unnerving scene.

The night of Charlotte’s graduation, her boyfriend returns. That same night Daphne is killed. Another girl is killed in a nearby town, too, and Charlotte has a feeling that the murders are connected. The Giant sets us up for a whodunit mystery, and sadly soon abandons this premise. Charlotte’s dad is a law enforcement officer in town; we think that maybe she’ll work with her father to solve the mysteries, but scenes with him are brief. He laments his frustrations and feelings of helplessness that people are being murdered, but there is no solving of any crimes.

From 30 minutes into The Giant, it becomes clear that the film is not so much about the concrete questions we’ve been presented with (who killed Daphne? What happened to Charlotte’s boyfriend?) but about the more abstract questions that Charlotte is dealing with. The cinematography is oppressively dark. We’re given close-ups of our characters faces, glimmering with sweat as they talk in hushed tones; bright lights glowing in backgrounds that are barely visible.

Frustrating visuals and cinematography aside, The Giant does keep you wondering right up until the very end. Odessa Young is magnetic as Charlotte, and Madelyn Cline shows promise as Charlotte’s best friend Olivia. Unfortunately, Cline isn’t given much to work with; her character is truly reduced to a supporting role, and we never get to know her. We never really get to know any of the characters very well; while the film is about Charlotte and what’s going on in her head, we don’t get a lot of information about what exactly that is, despite her emotional performance.

While not without problems, The Giant is an undeniably intriguing story. It’s a different take on the American teenage summer stories that we’re used to. It’s tense, it’s dark, and it’s beautiful. If you’re looking for a different take on the crime/thriller genre, something unique, enigmatic, and artistic, you won’t be disappointed by The Giant . 

The Giant  comes to digital and on demand November 13.

For another take on  The Giant  check out our YouTube review.

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The Giant Reviews

Although sometimes dealing in the disability tropes of this subgenre, The Giant stomps new ground in that it encourages us to actively take on the disability perspective of its protagonist.

Full Review | Feb 15, 2019

The Giant makes ptanque exciting and features the best friend you could ever dream of.

Full Review | Nov 10, 2017

The film is a shrewd political commentary and canny portrait of a society continuing to wrestle with its ineffaceable cruelty.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 12, 2017

The film moves deftly between humour and poignancy, generating a strong emotional response in its quieter moments.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 6, 2016

A truly singular piece of work...

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 30, 2016

Nyholm's debut feature doesn't only strive to show that its protagonist is more than the sum of his parts; sometimes with a roaming, soberly-lit perspective, sometimes with warm, vivid, dream-like interludes, it endeavours to do the same itself.

Full Review | Sep 11, 2016

While unique, this lumbering crossbreed never truly gains melodramatic traction ...

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‘Ullozhukku’ director Christo Tomy interview: ‘I did not want black and white characters in the movie’

Christo says ullozhukku , headlined by parvathy thiruvothu and urvashi, has characters that he moulded from his lived experiences.

Updated - July 03, 2024 04:26 pm IST

Published - July 03, 2024 04:01 pm IST

Christo Tomy, director of Ullozhukku. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

As the Malayalam movie Ullozhukku creates waves at the box office, its debutant director Christo Tomy is basking in the success of the film. Two women bound and separated by secrets is the theme of Ullozhukku , a story of resistance, remorse and reconciliation.

Christo Tomy with Urvashi on the set of Ullozhukku. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Brilliantly anchored by the cast led by Urvashi (Leelamma) and Parvathy Thiruvothu (Anju), the intense theme does not falter as the characters navigate troubled waters during a physically and emotionally trying period in their life.

Christo’s script for his film began from a place of grief when he lost his grandfather. As a result of the flood at Muttar in the Kuttanad region of Kerala, where Christo’s ancestral home is located, the family had to wait for nine days for the waters to subside before planning the burial.

In the movie, when Thomas dies, his mother, Leelamma, and his wife, Anju, are torn apart by suspicion. Meanwhile, the burial is postponed due to the flood. The generation gap becomes clear when the two women view the same circumstances from different perspectives. The subtle nuances that Christo brings to his narrative give depth and heft to his characters.

“I was determined that there should be no black and white characters. Like in real life, there had to be grey shades in all of them,” says Christo, who began writing the script in 2016.

Ullozhukku was part of the National Film Development (NFDC) Co-Production Market – Film Bazaar (2018) and the NFDC Screenwriter’s Lab (2017).

“The script bagged the first prize at Cinestaan India’s Storyteller’s Contest, the biggest feature film script contest in India,” he says. In 2019, he attended the Global Media Maker’s program in Los Angeles. The chance to meet and interact with many creative minds helped him as he tried to weave in feedback.  

Developing roles

Although the characters — especially Anju and Leelamma — remained the same, the roles evolved organically. “For instance, Prashant’s (Prashant Murali) character (Thomas) did not have much space initially. But as I reworked the script, his character gained significance and the dynamics between the two women too evolved.”

Urvashi and Parvathy Thiruvothu in a still from Ullozhukku , directed by Christo Tomy. | Photo Credit: Special arrangement

Christo explains that writing Anju’s and Leelamma’s characters was difficult. “I borrowed from my surroundings, background and milieu to add layers to their personality. Traits of people I have seen or heard have been added to flesh out the characters; these were not people I created out of the blue.”

Graduating from the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute, Christo made a mark as a director with two National Award-winning short films, Kanyaka and Kamuki . His Netflix true-crime documentary  Curry and Cyanide: The Jolly Joseph Case won him rave reviews.

A still of Ullozhukku , directed by Christo Tomy. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Instead of glorifying suffering and stoicism, Christo’s characters in Ullozhukku depict the changes in outlook in different generations. While Leelamma puts her family first, Anju, a woman of today, is not willing to sacrifice herself for the family.

“I have seen how my mother and aunts tackle a problem and their perspectives. For them, the family comes first and they would put up with a lot to uphold values considered important to hold the family together. I have seen how they react and the sacrifices they feel are necessary to protect the family.”

However, as Christo elaborates, a woman of the present day may not perceive the same situation in the same way. “My lived experiences helped me mould the characters.”

Varied approaches

Once the script was ready, the only person he could think of as Anju was Parvathy. His director of photography Shehnad Jalal suggested Urvashi. Christo went to Chennai to meet Urvashi. “During our conversation, Urvashi chechi shared with me her experiences and her opinion of the characters,” he says.

He adds that the generation gap was evident in the attitude of the actors towards the characters as well because Urvashi and Parvathy belong to different generations of actors. “Urvashi chechi’s point of view was quite in line with Leelamma’s. Parvathy’s outlook was quite different. If the older generation did not mind putting the family ahead of their own happiness, the present-day generation does not think like that... That created some interesting situations in the movie.”

Since they were shooting in rural Kuttanad, the actors were accommodated in houseboats. During the initial stage of the shooting, Parvathy was full of questions as the character and the ambience were alien to her. “Urvashi chechi is more of a spontaneous actor but there were times when she spoke aloud her lines to get the right tone and inflection. Both never went beyond a take or two for their scenes. They were that good!”

Christo was aware that since he was handling a subject that walked a tightrope regarding conventional morals and values, it would be difficult to find producers. Some producers warned him that audiences might not accept the characters and the movie.

As the release of the movie got closer, he was anxious about how the film would fare at the box office. But the positive reviews that started flowing in have been a morale booster.  

Location matters

Talking about why he chose his ancestral house as the main location, he says: “It was my grandfather’s passing that sketched the backdrop, and the premise of the film. Whenever I visualised the story, it was my house that came to my mind. I could have transposed the story to another building. But when Shehnad and I were getting ready for the shoot, we were unable to find a house better than my own for the story.”

Parvathy and Urvashi in a still from Christo Tomy’s  Ullozhukku . | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Apart from that, the story had to be located where water could be filled to shoot the flood and also have a vast backyard with vegetation. “Considering all that, we felt my house was the best option. My ammachi (grandmother) stays in the house. For nearly a year and a half, they moved to a rented place while we completed the shooting.”

Christo recalls that as children, they used to have fun wading in the water during the annual flood. In those days, the annual flood was viewed as an advantage as the sediments left behind after the flood made the soil fertile and ideal for cultivation.

“Now, due to climate change, the situation has changed. The number of times the flood occurs has increased, and so has the volume of water. Many families are moving away from the area. Even in the case of our house, after the shooting was over, a bund was built around it to prevent the water from entering .”

Women-centric stories

All his works so far have centred on women characters, so we ask whether he finds it more interesting to work with women characters at the heart of his stories.

“While writing Kamuki and Ullozhukku , I asked myself if the journey of the characters would be more difficult for a man or a woman. The answer was clearly women. So, there was no debate in my mind that the movie would revolve around a woman.”

He emphasises that he wants to direct movies that cover different genres. “Now, I am aware of the business of cinema and what is needed to enhance a film’s chances at the box office. Discussions are on for a series. It is still premature to talk about it.”

Then adds with a laugh that he is looking forward to direct scripts written by other writers. “Writing is a lonely and difficult process. I will be happy if I get good scripts to direct.”

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The new culture secretary’s agenda: five things the uk film & tv sector will want from keir starmer’s labour government.

• ‘The Lives Of Others’ Producer Max Wiedemann Says A Collections Agency For Artificial Intelligence Would Allow Rights Holders To Share Upside – Munich International Film Festival

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Influential German producer Max Wiedemann has said the likes of OpenAI and Google need to let content owners share in the upside created by new artificial intelligence tools.

“You have to let the rights holders participate in your productivity gains,” he said, before suggesting a body similar to those found in the music business could redistribute some of the bounty. “Maybe we need some kind of AI collection agency; those AI models that earn money from offering these tools have to pay the agency and the money is distributed among the copyright owners.”

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Copyright and how rights owners are compensated is a hot button issue in the world of AI. Last week it was revealed that the world’s biggest record labels are suing AI start-ups Suno and Udio, alleging mass copyright infringement because the tech firms have trained AI products using their material.

Wiedemann said the tech companies need to be more open about the content they are using to train AI systems. “The first thing I think we need is transparency – I really don’t understand why we don’t tell these big companies like Open AI and Google that if you want to make new business in the European Union you have to show your training data, that’s something you have in your books, it’s not a complicated thing.”

The German producer is also Co-Chief Production and Business Development Officer at Leonine, which backs Wiedemann & Berg. He said the whole of Leonine has embraced AI in its own working practices, making tools and training available to hundreds of staff across the group and its prodcos. At a creative level, he added that making AI tools ubiquitous “opens the door for a lot of creative people to show what they can do,” but added: “Not everyone who can create high-end pictures is Christopher Nolan, you still need these paramount talents to create real content that people actually want to watch.”

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‘Despicable Me 4’: Rise of the Super-Minion

Steve carell’s gru and his family are on the run from a gigantic cockroach in the franchise’s sixth installment. also: the minions become superheroes..

“Despicable Me 4″ is actually the sixth movie to feature those obnoxious yellow creatures, the Minions , and the fifth movie to star their creator, Gru (Steve Carell). These characters have been cash cows for Universal since they first appeared in the original “Despicable Me” back in 2010. I am sure this movie will continue that trend of boffo box office this summer .

A lot has happened since Gru first met the trio of orphans who would become his beloved “leetle gurls.” Margo (Miranda Cosgrove), Edith (Dana Gaier), and Agnes (Madison Skyy Polan) now have a toddler brother, Gru Jr., the son of Gru and his wife, Lucy (Kristen Wiig). Their household even has Lucky, a one-horned goat pet who is clearly not housebroken.

They share a nice house in the suburbs with the Minions, who continue to wear denim, perform slapstick, and speak in the Minionese dialect provided by the director of four of these movies, Pierre Coffin.

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Additionally, Gru has given up his villainous ways and joined Lucy’s villain chasing organization, the AVI. After all, the AVI is how the two of them met way back in “Despicable Me 2.” As luck would have it, that was the first movie in the series I reviewed . I got a kick out of “Despicable Me,” and I proudly declared my love for those Minions in my review of the sequel.

That adoration is why I also got to review “ Minions ” and “ Minions: The Rise of Gru .” My colleagues were happy to give those assignments to me, too! The Minions may slay at the box office, but they annoy the hell out of most critics I know.

I, on the other hand, really dig the Minions. They speak to my inner 6-year-old. The franchise has scored an impressive four for five in terms of positive reviews from me (the unwieldy “Despicable Me 3″ is the outlier). So, it’s no surprise I enjoyed this installment, which has the nerve to give the Minions superpowers.

I suppose I should not be trusted on all things Minion-related. Then again, you don’t need my opinion here. If you hate the Minions, you’ll stay home. If you hate the Minions, and you have kids, you’ll have to see their movie anyway — multiple times.

God laughs. And so do I.

But enough about me — let’s talk about Gru. He’s joined the good guys, much to the chagrin of his alma mater, Lycee Pas Bon. The premiere school for doctorates in villainy is hosting a gala event/class of ‘85 reunion. Gru and Lucy roll up in their fancy car. They’re joined by a few Minions in their own pocket-size vehicle.

The guest of honor at Lycee Pas Bon is Maxime Le Mal (a goofy Will Ferrell), Gru’s former classmate. On Le Mal’s arm is his partner in crime, Valentina (Sofia Vergara), who was once the “captain of the femme fatale cheerleading squad.” During his award speech, Le Mal reveals that he’s become an extremely dangerous (and very gross-looking) giant human-cockroach hybrid.

After a brief battle, Gru and Lucy capture Le Mal and sentence him to the maximum-security prison overseen by their AVI boss Silas Ramsbottom (Steve Coogan). As you’d expect, Le Mal escapes from jail and seeks revenge, forcing Gru and his family to enter witness protection.

Gru — I mean “Chet Cunningham” — moves to Mayflower, a ritzy town filled with luxury mansions and snobby neighbors like the preadolescent Poppy (Joey King) and her snobby dad, Perry (Stephen Colbert). While their daughters acclimate to a new house and school, Gru and Lucy try to fit in at the country club.

Unfortunately, when you’re the star of a billion-dollar franchise, somebody’s going to recognize you. Poppy threatens to blow Gru’s cover unless he assists her in a criminal scheme involving honey badgers. If you predicted that someone would utter the meme “honey badger don’t care,” you’ve seen a “Despicable Me” movie.

And what about those Minions? Since they are associated with Gru, he can’t bring them to Mayflower. Instead, they become AVI’s property, with Silas performing experiments on them. The result is a group of superhero Minions with powers cribbed from “The Fantastic Four,” “X-Men , ” and the Stretch Armstrong doll. With great power comes great responsibility, as the Spider-Man saying goes. Of course, Minions are beyond irresponsible, so bedlam ensues.

“Despicable Me 4″ is more of the same — questionable needle drops (Gru Jr.’s diapers are repeatedly changed to the strains of Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher”), chaotic chase scenes, and Minion madness. What’s missing is the emotional bond between Gru and his family that stabilized the first two entries. I missed the gentleness of those family scenes where Margo, Edith, and Agnes bonded with their imperfect father.

Writers Mike White and Ken Daurio replace these moments with Easter eggs and callbacks to prior installments. There’s even a scene featuring every vanquished villain in the franchise. It’s cheap pandering to fans, but I really couldn’t stay mad at a movie that uses Culture Club’s “ Karma Chameleon ” as a point of contention and has two shout-outs to one of the best movies of 1985, “Real Genius.”

As much as I enjoyed “Despicable Me 4,” I must concede that it’s time for the Minions to retire. But if we still have an inhabitable world in 2025, there will very likely be a “Despicable Me 5.”

DESPICABLE ME 4

Directed by Chris Renaud and Patrick Delage. Written by Mike White and Ken Daurio. Starring Steve Carell, Kristen Wiig, Pierre Coffin, Will Ferrell, Sofia Vergara, Joey King, Miranda Cosgrove, Dana Gaier, Madison Skyy Polan, and Stephen Colbert. At AMC Boston Common, Landmark Kendall Square, Alamo Drafthouse Seaport, AMC Causeway, suburbs. 95 minutes. PG (minion mayhem, cucaracha criminality)

Odie Henderson is the Boston Globe's film critic.