Filmmaker Steven Spielberg joined forces with Walt Disney Pictures, for the first time ever, to make The BFG also known as Big Friendly Giant, Roald Dahl’s classic children’s book about a giant that catches dreams for children. This September Dahl turned 100, and it’s a 'gloriumptious' (glorious) way to celebrate the beloved writer’s birthday.
Big Friendly Giant is especially adorable because of gobblefunk, the gibberish English spoken by him and his nine brothers in Giant Country. Dahl had created 320 words just for The BFG and this year, Oxford University Press honoured him by publishing The Oxford Ronald Dahl Dictionary. While his 50 feet brothers swollop human beans (eat human beings), the 24 feet BFG refuses to be a man-gobbling cannybull (cannibal), and only eats snozzcumbers (a knobbly vegetable). To make up for the harm caused by the giants, he travels to Dream Country every night to catch phizzwizards (good dreams) in glass jars and then blows them through the windows of children’s rooms at the witching hour (the darkest hour of night when everyone is in deep sleep). It’s during this time that BFG hears with his enormous ears, used for listening to the stories of dreams, Sophie’s gentle heartbeats.
Every film originates as a dream, in someone’s mind, which is then somehow captured, mixed, refined, and ultimately projected on the screen. This is true for all art forms. This is true for Walt Disney, Roald Dahl, and Steven Spielberg. Every time we read a book or watch a movie, we witness the manifestation of dreams. Director Steven Spielberg uses many visual metaphors in The BFG to suggest that movies are really made of zozimus (dream molecules).
Dahl’s book, The BFG was published in 1982, the same year that Spielberg’s movie E.T. was released. Melissa Mathison, who had written the screenplay of E.T., is back with the screenplay of The BFG. It’s the story of the unlikely friendship between two orphans, a little English girl, and an unlettered giant. The moral of the story is relevant. We must learn to embrace our differences with open arms and should never shame or condemn each other. A closer look will reveal that our similarities outweigh our differences. Nobody is perfect, even Dream Country has trogglehumpers (bad dreams). We are all gigantic and tiny, we are all powerful and powerless. The film stresses on this point. We first see Sophie looming over a dollhouse like a giant (and the four drunks scared off by her are the same actors who play the giants), then we see BFG looming over Sophie like a giant, and then the Fleshlumpeater looming over BFG like yet another giant. We must never stop dreaming, we must never stop hoping, for a better tomorrow.
The BFG is a live-action film with a lot of high-end animation work. It used the same performance-capture special effects as Spielberg’s animation Adventures of Tintin (2011), but this time it’s super photorealistic. A major collaborator here is Mark Rylance, winner of this year’s Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for Spielberg’s last film, Bridge of Spies (2015). Rylance is just perfect as the BFG, no one can articulate gobblefunk like him. Ruby Barnhill is adorable as Sophie. Amitabh Bachchan did a great job as the voice of BFG in the Hindi dubbed version.
A children’s book by Roald Dahl is unimaginable without the illustrations of Quentin Blake, and a film by Spielberg is unimaginable without the music of John Williams. The music of The BFG is more like a comic opera, or a cartoon ballet. The best musical moments occur when: BFG flies off with Sophie, just like E.T. and Elliot, high above the palm trees (track: “To Giant Country”); BFG teaches Sophie about the secret of dreams (tracks: “Dream Country, Dream Jars, Blowing Dreams”). Both the giants and the dreams are given their own tunes. The giants are given a 'funny' bass voice, stupid and ignorant. The dreams are given a 'childlike' treble voice, playful and innocent, like the wonderful little creatures (susuwataris) in Hayao Miyazaki’s animation, Spirited Away (2001).
As the film begins, the new Roald Dahl logo, “ROALD DAHL’s The BFG” appears on the screen above the film’s title. The logo was commissioned by the Dahl Estate to commemorate Dahl’s birth centenary, for rebranding his oeuvre to a new generation of readers. By putting the 'ROALD DAHL' stamp on his film, Spielberg is telling us that his goal is to honour the author’s work cherished by children all over the world. It feels more like a poem, an intimate chamber play, than a big Hollywood movie.
The Queen of UK plays a key role in The BFG. In 2012, to salute the 30th Anniversary of the book’s publication, the Royal Mail of UK released a set of special stamps.Sloshbungling (must-watch) films based on books by Roald DahlHere’s my ranking of every film based on Dahl’s books for children:
10. The BFG (1989, Animation for TV); 9. Esio Trot (2015, TV Movie); 8. The Witches (1990); 7. Danny The Champion of the World (1989, TV Movie); 6. James and the Giant Peach (1996); 5. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005); 4. Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971); 3. Matilda (1996); 2. Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009); 1. The BFG (2016).Swishboggling (must-read) books by Roald DahlThese are Dahl’s greatest books for children (by publication date):
James and the Giant Peach (1961); Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964); Fantastic Mr. Fox (1970); Danny The Champion of the World (1975); The Twits (1980); The BFG (1982);
The Witches (1983); Boy: Tales of Childhood (1984); Going Solo (1986); Matilda (1988).
Thursday, June 18, 2026
