Giant is the great liberal epic of the American cinema. And by “liberal,” I mean it is suffused with mid-20th-century, all-we-need-to-do-is- have-love-between-the-races-and-everything- will-be-fine optimism. Its radio ads declared it a movie “about big feelings and big things!” It’s a story about Texas wealth over the generations and how that wealth moved from cattle to oil and from being possessed by men on horses to men who build shopping centers and airports. No matter what is happening, Rock Hudson’s Bick Benedict is clueless. America isn’t great because America is good. America is great because it’s America and screw you if you think otherwise. He doesn’t understand that the beautiful wife he’s brought from the Northeast (played by Elizabeth Taylor) isn’t just going to sit around and look pretty. He doesn’t understand that the black goop found by his ranch hand (James Dean, in his final role) is going to supplant his livestock and that his land will soon have derricks all over it rather than grazing cattle. And he doesn’t understand why his gentle son isn’t going to go into the family business and prefers being a doctor. He sure doesn’t understand his son marrying someone from Mexico who can’t get her hair done in the same salon as her mother-in-law. And when his daughter-in-law is denied service at a roadhouse, he really doesn’t understand that the racist who owns the place is going to beat him to a pulp when he challenges the guy to a fist fight.
Bick understands nothing. He’s basically a clueless shmuck. But he’s rich and is more or less happy and means well and is married to Elizabeth Taylor and everything is going to be just fine. He truly is as big and dumb as America herself. You want a movie about American greatness, you see Giant , a colossal illustration of Otto von Bismarck’s point that “God has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States of America.” Years later a movie would come along that really would have fit my poster tagline, only with Tom Hanks’ image at its center. Forrest Gump is about a mentally impaired man who wanders through the second half of the 20th century in holy innocence and is rewarded with fame and wealth untold, which he neither sought nor understands. As he rises in his blessed ignorance, his whip-smart but emotionally damaged beloved is betrayed by the 1960s counterculture, beaten by her hippie boyfriend, gets AIDS, and then dies. We have more Nobel- prize winners than any other country, but we also have Florida Man committing head- slappingly stupid crimes. I once saw its director, Robert Zemeckis, say he didn’t actually understand why the movie had been such a phenomenon and that it would take decades to grasp why the country took Forrest Gump to its bosom. Well, the decades have passed, and I have the answer: It’s because Forrest Gump is as big and
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August 2019
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