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Film: The Selfish Giant (15)

Oscar Wilde's parable of the selfish giant who finally makes an emotional connection has been given a brilliant update, says JEFF SAWTELL

The Selfish Giant (15)

Directed by Clio Bernard

5 Stars

The selfish Giant should be compulsory viewing to all those self-seeking politicians who promote the "big society" or "one nation" theories.

Ostensibly inspired by Oscar Wilde's short story, it features a giant who hates children and bans them from his garden.

But later he sees them playing happily and his heart softens, even helping one to climb into a tree

Writer-director Clio Barnard employs this parable about love as a metaphor for contemporary Britain, where the wealthy reside in their guarded, gated communities while the poor live beyond the fence.

Inevitably, it's a film that's been likened to Ken Loach's Kes, since it's set in Bradford and concerns what Tony Blair termed "feral kids" - those excluded from school and who survive on the streets.

Yet its roots lie a few decades earlier, when kids played on post-war bomb sites before the days of community parks, never suitable alternatives.

Many were resourceful, with some building box carts from pram wheels and collecting junk and bottles while others sought jobs, delivering all sorts before and after school.

This film's protagonists are two such children. Arbor (Conner Chapman) is skinny and sharp while Swifty (Shaun Thomas) is bigger and slow.

They find friendship in each other, since the latter saves the former from being bullied and, inevitably, due to their misdemeanours they get excluded from school.

They suffer under a shameful austerity plan, which sees the introduction of legal loan-sharks, social security spies and bullying bailiffs frightening the families. They both have worried mothers and useless male role models.

But they're encourages to make a few bob by scrap-metal merchant Kitten (Sean Gilder). He has a trotter he wants to race and slowly he realises that Shifty has a way with horses, so seeks to employ him for an important race.

When they're not hitching their old horse to a home-made cart they compete with crooks, which inevitably leads to conflict between them and the law.

And their different priorities lead to further friction, with Arbor urging Shifty to help them seek new and dangerous ways to coin some cash that doesn't go quite to plan.

The resultant shocking outcome is searing in a narrative which both underlines that love is required for healing and promotes the cause of social responsibility.

All this will be as another country to the affluent, those who created chaos capitalism as they try to turn the social clock back to before public welfare was the norm.

Beautifully photographed by Mike Eley the film invokes an industrial wasteland that has developed alienated individuals and estranged communities.

The selfish giant learns by his mistakes, while ours continue to maintain the class system, the rich still seeking ways to fence themselves in with private armies.

The closing scenes, seen through the tears, do provide a glint of hope in the eye of a forgiving mother since, no matter the situation, people do rebel.

A brilliant social realist film is itself a sign of the changing times.

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