Jasper Rees

Dahl by Spielberg

The film is held aloft by the loamy charm of Mark Rylance, who would make a great Scrooge or Prospero or God

Nobody who witnessed it can have forgotten Mark Rylance summoning giants to his aid in Jerusalem. As Johnny ‘Rooster’ Byron, drug-dealing roustabout threatened with expulsion from his little patch of Eden, Rylance roared and drummed until the theatre shuddered with the sound of gigantic stomps approaching. That colossal performance brought him to international — as in American — attention. The biggest giant to answer his call was Steven Spielberg. The world’s most successful living fabulist now won’t get out of bed for any other leading man.

We’ve already had Bridge of Spies, for which Rylance won an Oscar. There are two further Spielberg/Rylance collaborations on the runway. But for now, here comes The BFG, in which Rylance lends Rooster’s wurzelly vowels to the voice of Roald Dahl’s big friendly dreamcatcher.

This is a centenary celebration. Would the author have appreciated the birthday gift? Dahl’s antic stories for and about children have become box office in musical theatre, but cinema doesn’t quite know what to do with him: his last visit to the big screen was Tim Burton’s dismally claustrophobic Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Until it opts for a weepier conclusion, this BFG is mostly faithful to the original — much more so than Spielberg’s Hollywoodisation of Hergé, which was basically Tintindiana Jones and the Doomed Template.

Fans of The BFG will recognise the story of Sophie, a young hyper-imaginative orphan girl who struggles with sleep. One night from the balcony of her orphanage in foggy London town she catches sight of a stealthy giant striding across the deserted Victorian cobbles. To prevent her revealing his existence, he steals her away to Giant Land, which here looks a bit like the Lake District enjoying a dry spell. It turns out the BFG is a vegetarian titch compared with his Brobdingnagian neighbours, a pack of ugly thugs whose fantasy snack is the flesh of human ‘beans’.

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