Bonifacio Angius’s last feature, I Giganti, to be screened in the Locarno Film Festival, soon resembles Marco Ferrari’s controversial masterpiece Grande Bouffe (1974). In both, death is the destiny and absurdity, the underlying core theme and characters’ mode of action; in the director’s words,” I Giganti is a film of ghosts and of losers.” The film may be too nihilistic and unreal, but there could be no escape from its poignant message of life/death dialectic and appreciation of its formal minimalism.
The story takes place in a remote house. Progressively, five main characters get back into the reunion event. Each carries baggage, one that sucks the soul out of him towards the end. Massimo (the director), who used to be an actor, lost his daughter and the family. Through flashbacks, Anguis takes us to the shattered lives of him and the others. Stefano (Stefano Defenu) seems hopeless and confused, but his reason is soul-crushing betrayal. He could have had his dream girl, but she chose not him; the last scene and his faded memory reinforce his tragic quest and fate. Andrea (Michele Manca) and Riccardo (Riccardo Bombagi )are as disoriented and lost too. They turn into drugs and prostitutes, but it does not suffice. Piero (Stefano Manca) is the most unpredictable and complex character. He is the youngest of all but the most mature. He understands the abysmal state of mind that engulfed other companions. As equally, he recognizes and speaks Anguis main idea of the film, which is the question of existence and absurdity of life. In simple language, would anything change if all of the five characters die? Would we need an ambulance if any of us takes his life away? He constantly repeats his belief that “It is all in our head.” Isn’t the film also an image in our mind and devoid of reality? The director portrays the lives and tragic friendship of five characters, but at a deeper level, he questions the meaning of life in the face of all its struggles, joys, adventures, and dark sides.
Formally, Angius utilizes space, camera angle, and music to create the sense of nihilism, hope and neo-Western, drama of the film. There are bullets, booze, drug, and ample violence to evoke generic experimentation and association with conventional generic forms. Masterfully, the interior shots are close-up, medium-shot and the exterior shots are primarily wide and a few. The scenes inside the house are grimly shot and suggest the suffocation and sense of doom. In contrast, scenes outside the house are lit, though absurd and without much purpose and direction to escape Bonifacio Angius’s depiction of absurdity. Music plays a key role in storytelling as well. It allows the plot to unfold without making viewers lose interest and not follow the heavy absurdist and violent storyline. Also, it brings the memory element and how characters’ lives and melody are entwined in special scenes. The gramophone is also not just an antique but a window into a lost past, one that all five characters desperately attempted to salvage.
I Giganti could be difficult to watch and absorb for many viewers. It has suicide, shooting, drug feast scene as other classics, but the absurd tragicomic subtext is more subtle and deafening. It is different from Perfidia (2014), in which Angius depicted the complexities of a father-son relationship. It is also on a different tone that Ovunque proteggimi (2018) shows an older man’s romantic tale. The film presents many universal questions and dilemmas. Why do we live? Who do we live for? Does friendship play any role in circumstances to save us? Does it matter if we resort to violence if everything is meaningless anymore? Can our memories save us from the weight of absurdity? These questions could be unsettling, but this film and medium of cinema can rekindle fresh thoughts on them with punchy dialogues, strong acting, melancholic music, and absurdist storyline and ending.
Score: B+