Giants Being Lonely (2021)
Streaming as a part of the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival, Grear Patterson's feature directorial debut Giants Being Lonely brings the audience into a small middle American town in an attempt to capture the dysfunction and turmoil which lies within its underbelly. Following various members of a high school baseball team as they go about their daily lives caught between the freedom of adolescence and the pressures they find in life around them, Giants Being Lonely clearly has similar ambitions to other projects such as Terrence Malick's Badlands but ultimately strikes out lacking the craft or purpose of said example.
Continuing a recent trend sweeping independent cinema, Giants Being Lonely's biggest fault is simply the mundane soul it carries in storytelling and worldbuilding. Where there is something to be said and celebrated within the concept of a more quiet and natural forming story that slowly allows emotions and ideas to crawl into the feature, this has to be done with a certain level of craft and skill in order to make the feature overall feel rewarding. Sadly, Giants Being Lonely doesn't have this important element. Instead of feeling disturbingly seductive in order to get the audience to invest in these characters and the world they live in, the film feels boring and empty for the vast majority of its runtime. It also says something that this film even at only 81-minutes can feel like a chore at times to sit through. The film takes such a vague and forgettable approach to its storytelling that much of the thesis and purpose of the feature is lost which comes as a huge blow to the film.
It also doesn't help that beyond just the style of storytelling, the film feels rather lackluster in multiple areas. The largest being the acting. Where the occasional performance will find a moment in the spotlight to shine, the majority of the performances - specifically within the baseball team - feel rather unnatural and forced. For a film that defines itself by its realism and authenticity, this fundamentally destroys the foundation on which the film stands, making it near impossible for the audience to connect with the film how the filmmakers would hope. The leads of the film including the likes of Jack Irving are far from bad but lack the ability and confidence to truly command a scene and their shortcomings are also felt on quite a large level.
Luckily for the film, not everything works against it. Where the pacing and focus of the film might be disappointing, the directing overall especially when corresponding with the editing from Ismael de Diego and Olmo Schnabel is rather strong and competent with the film successfully creating an uneasy sense of tension. The cinematography by Hunter Zimny also shines capturing this small and seemingly average American town in ways that evoke quite a powerful sense of mood and emotion. For individuals who are from similar small towns, it is easy to imagine that a sense of connection and authenticity will be found.
Where Giants Being Lonely is far from being the venomous masterpiece it reaches for, it luckily also isn't a complete disaster. It is clear that there is legitimate talent on display here but it gets lost and buried beneath the film's lackluster focus and execution. Considering this is a first feature however, this gives enough to make Grear Patterson a name to watch and it wouldn't be shocking to see some really great work come from him as his confidence as a filmmaker grows with experience.
Continuing a recent trend sweeping independent cinema, Giants Being Lonely's biggest fault is simply the mundane soul it carries in storytelling and worldbuilding. Where there is something to be said and celebrated within the concept of a more quiet and natural forming story that slowly allows emotions and ideas to crawl into the feature, this has to be done with a certain level of craft and skill in order to make the feature overall feel rewarding. Sadly, Giants Being Lonely doesn't have this important element. Instead of feeling disturbingly seductive in order to get the audience to invest in these characters and the world they live in, the film feels boring and empty for the vast majority of its runtime. It also says something that this film even at only 81-minutes can feel like a chore at times to sit through. The film takes such a vague and forgettable approach to its storytelling that much of the thesis and purpose of the feature is lost which comes as a huge blow to the film.
It also doesn't help that beyond just the style of storytelling, the film feels rather lackluster in multiple areas. The largest being the acting. Where the occasional performance will find a moment in the spotlight to shine, the majority of the performances - specifically within the baseball team - feel rather unnatural and forced. For a film that defines itself by its realism and authenticity, this fundamentally destroys the foundation on which the film stands, making it near impossible for the audience to connect with the film how the filmmakers would hope. The leads of the film including the likes of Jack Irving are far from bad but lack the ability and confidence to truly command a scene and their shortcomings are also felt on quite a large level.
Luckily for the film, not everything works against it. Where the pacing and focus of the film might be disappointing, the directing overall especially when corresponding with the editing from Ismael de Diego and Olmo Schnabel is rather strong and competent with the film successfully creating an uneasy sense of tension. The cinematography by Hunter Zimny also shines capturing this small and seemingly average American town in ways that evoke quite a powerful sense of mood and emotion. For individuals who are from similar small towns, it is easy to imagine that a sense of connection and authenticity will be found.
Where Giants Being Lonely is far from being the venomous masterpiece it reaches for, it luckily also isn't a complete disaster. It is clear that there is legitimate talent on display here but it gets lost and buried beneath the film's lackluster focus and execution. Considering this is a first feature however, this gives enough to make Grear Patterson a name to watch and it wouldn't be shocking to see some really great work come from him as his confidence as a filmmaker grows with experience.