It’s grim up north.

Clio Barnard’s follow-up to her brilliant docu-drama, The Arbor, is a film of bleak beauty as she refashions Oscar Wilde’s eponymous story to create a modern fable for our times. The Selfish Giant is a powerful slice of social realism in the vein of early Ken Loach and Shane Meadows that delivers a devastating kick to the stomach.

Set on the sink estates of Bradford and the surrounding wastelands, The Selfish Giant tells the story of two best friends, Arbor, a frustrated and angry young boy and the gentle and sensitive, Swifty. Expelled from school they make money in the scrap metal trade working for the yard manager as he takes advantage of their naivety.

The…

The Times They Are A-Changin’

How well Clio Barnard has realized the gravity of this immortal line and applied it to perfection can be seen in her way of conceiving a novel, modernistic, existentialistic, unforgiving and undeniably real, stark outlook to a character that was established roughly 125 years ago by the visionary Oscar Wilde. Oscar Wilde’s Selfish Giant was a simplistic yet greatly edifying representation of a section of the human kind who are intrinsically introverted, the character which, as time accrued, gave rose to their misanthropic perception of the world. The reason behind The Selfish Giant’s incapability to harmonize with those around him is his inherent characteristic, that is genuine and ineradicable. But bear in mind, he was…

Travel to any corner of the UK and you find communities seemingly cut off from the economic market as we understand it. An underclass created in a post-Thatcher society accentuated under a Blair government that opened up financial freedom toward a black hole of debt. Now summarised by the phrase 'Broken Britain' coined to label and patronise the real issues that face real families everyday of the week.

Whilst filming The Arbor in Bradford three years ago, director Clio Barnard met a young boy who would prove to be the inspiration for the characters in this, her second release, The Selfish Giant. His scruffy appearance and fierce personality was an insight into the thousands of children living a life on…

Oscar Wilde's story is a fable about a giant who has the most beautiful garden imaginable. In his absence, children walk into it and start playing there, having the time of their lives. When he returns he banishes them from his garden, wanting the place to himself. He even puts up a 'no trespassing' sign. The children are left to find things to do in the grey world outside the garden. Inside, the Giant discovers that both spring and summer have decided to stay out as well, turning the beautiful garden into a cold and miserable place. Only when the children somehow managed to find a way back inside, the giant sees the error of his ways and welcomes the…

It's an incredible balancing act to imbue a gritty slice of life on a moribund Northern sink estate with the air of a universal fable, but this is what Clio Barnard has achieved with The Selfish Giant.

We have seen this time of film many times before - what I suppose could be lazily labelled as misery porn - it's not exactly a secret that there are certain areas of many towns, particularly in the North, that have been practically left to rot in the post-Thatcher wasteland caused by the loss of industry. Having lived in the North all my adult life, I can't help but feel an affinity for these blighted communities (hell, I've lived in one), and I…

There's just not enough stars.

If Ken Loach has decided that Jimmy's Hall will mark his leave from the world of fiction film making then I think we can safely say his style of storytelling will continue regardless because, on this evidence, the mantle has been passed to Clio Barnard.

Only her second film, following the deeply impressive debut feature The Arbor which detailed the life of Andrea Dunbar in an experimental documentary fashion, The Selfish Giant places us firmly and literally in the muck and brass world of scrap metal in deeply scarred post Thatcher/Blair Bradford.

Using the language of Loach, Barnard skilfully cultivates a tale which is in some ways similar to his own Kes using two juvenile…

I'm not a boy, I do not have ADD, and I'm not from a sinkhole in the UK; and yet "The Selfish Giant" hits home on a very deep level.

I am from a farm in the North American prairies, existential by nature: bleak, windy, lonely, and often, poverty stricken. Large families where kids don't always get the attention they need; harsh landscapes that lead to harsh people, and death, very, very close, always.

Barnard's film is brutally and beautifully honest; it doesn't shy away from grim realities, and for that alone, this director should be praised. She presents us with truth.

The film is also touching in cinematic ways: those shots of power plants in the mist, the power…

I had to watch this in two parts because of my curiosity and worrying. Is it really a good idea to let the horse trot on the pavement with cars going fast right beside it honking and people who are shouting? I didn't find any real answer to that, and even though the scene was amazing in many ways, it kind of bothered me.

With this said I've now watched the whole movie, and it sure is impressing in more ways than one. The Selfish Giant has a nerve and realism that is hard to not get drawn in to. It also strikes me as a movie that really have taken the essence of the Wilde short story, but maybe…

Well isn't this devastating beast!

I will resist spoiling the film to keep it fresh for virgin eyes and minds though, and instead will take a moment to mention the way the film utilises it's working class British setting and characters to its advantage, drowning us in thick accents and forcing us to wallow in the mire of troubled and desperate lives dealing with true social hardship, with kids stealing and selling scrap metal to earn a pittance. This is neo, neo-realist fare with performances that are distinctively raw and natural. We build a certain empathy for the young teens in focus and even in the films most tumultuous moments, it's hard to monitor where your allegiances lie if at…

If the Dardenne brothers directed Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher the result would be something close to Clio Barnard’s The Selfish Giant. However, this British feature adapted from a fairy tale by Oscar Wilde possesses little of Ramsay’s lyricism and more of the Dardenne’s uncompromising realism.

That is evident from the very start of the film, as we follow the two lead teens in a starry night trying to find junk to later sell and gain some profit. It is right away clear that this is a film preoccupied with societal problems such as poverty, economic isolation and education, and throughout it these issues become more and more explicit. The biggest problem I had with the film, and which sets it apart…

Review also posted on my blog

Director: Clio Barnard
Screenwriter: Clio Barnard
Cast: Conner Chapman, Shaun Thomas, Elliott Tittensor, Sean Gilder, Lorraine Ashbourne, Steve Evets, Siobhan Finneran & Rebecca Manley
Runtime: 91 min // Certificate: 15

Gypo; chav; pikey… I hear these words every single day, whether it be out in the street, in casual conversation with friends or, perhaps most perniciously, in the media. I myself am guilty of using them; after all, they’re just words… except they’re not, are they? They’re terms of abuse, used to differentiate one class of people from the other and to differentiate the deserving from the undeserving. In Britain it’s no longer just the haves vs. the have-nots, it’s also one type of have-not…

Despite having a total screen time of about a minute and probably being about 12 years old, the bully in this film terrified me. Unlike most bullies in films, this felt real. It felt disgusting and visceral. In many films, the bully consists of some tall dude with a group of roughly four friends who high five him every time he calls someone a nerd. This bully could have been like this. He could have been this cheesy, “give me your lunch money” type bully. However, due to the direction and performance, he wasn’t. This brutal reality shown in this 30 second scene is continued throughout the whole film, mixing raw, gut wrenching emotion with the complexities of living. The…