My Giant
With Billy Crystal and Gheorghe Muresan.
By Lisa Alspector
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At one point Sammy starts to tell Max the story of King Kong but stops, having suddenly realized that Max might see a parallel to his own life. Because it occurs to Sammy that Max might interpret the tragedy of the big ape as a comment on his chances of winning the love of an average-size woman or the respect of people who see him as a monster, the audience is distracted from another possible subtext of the scene. Sammy begins the story to explain to Max, who’s never seen a movie, what a movie is so he can persuade him to try out for one. Watching this scene, you can’t help wondering how Muresan was approached about playing the role of Max, but Sammy’s quick save has resolved the dramatic tension before Max can share the realization. Whether Sammy’s cutting the story short because he doesn’t want to alienate Max from signing on with him or because he wants to spare Max’s feelings, the moment is about Sammy’s emotional development–and viewers are distracted from thinking about any parallel between Max and Muresan.
Max gets the part, which whets Sammy’s appetite for more success for him and his new client. Desperate to get Max to Las Vegas so he’ll have a crack at being cast in a Steven Seagal movie, Sammy accepts an exploitation gig–a wrestling match between Max and several midgets–that will allow Max to earn the money they need to make the trip. But Sammy pulls Max out of the ring the moment he realizes how upsetting the experience is for him. Again, an emphasis on character development, on Sammy learning to be a better person, obscures a parallel between the audience and the cruel, thrill-hungry patrons of the wrestling match–both have just watched a giant tussle with a bunch of midgets. The illusion persists that the producers of My Giant hiring freaks to put on display is altogether different from the manager of an exploitation club doing the same thing.
My Giant is exciting partly because it dares to get so close to this idea, even though it then pulls back. But Gummo tackles the issue head-on. The directorial debut of Harmony Korine, Gummo played in town for one week recently, and only at Facets; it’s now out on video. This seminarrative about a couple of cat-killing, glue-sniffing boys and the other motley residents of their town–most of whom are represented by nonactors–seemed to alienate many people. It was slammed by most reviewers, including Jonathan Rosenbaum, who suggested in January that Chicagoans should be grateful that the movie hadn’t been shown here yet. Janet Maslin observed in the New York Times last October that it wasn’t too early to label Gummo the worst movie of 1997.
For most of its 95 minutes Gummo urges viewers to contemplate the significance of people being displayed for their intrinsic qualities, something My Giant doesn’t do–instead the slickness and fantasy that surround a real giant’s portrayal of a giant distract you from thinking about the fact that a giant’s been filmed and displayed mainly because of his size. Gummo makes viewers ask hard questions about what exploitation is, about why it might be intriguing, disturbing, or ethically questionable to display or to look at people who seem more vulnerable than professional actors (if for no other reason than it seems likely that they haven’t been paid much if anything to appear before you). The movie doesn’t answer these questions; they’re not answerable. But they’re well worth thinking about–especially because movies like My Giant totally discourage it.
