Gigantic

For a movie with such a title, “Gigantic” is rather understated. The name calls forth visions of epic battles or heroic sacrifices, but “Gigantic” is rather the story of a budding romance that shimmers in its details—like the first chewy taste of goat stew or the unceremonious clank of earrings dropped straight onto floor tiles. The film is frank, unassuming, and gently witty. In a soft and steady voice, it speaks volumes about the power of chance in finding love.

The movie begins when the obnoxious Al Lolly (John Goodman) purchases a $14,000 Swedish mattress in the warehouse where shy 28-year-old Brian Weathersby (Paul Dano, “There Will Be Blood”) works as a salesman. Later in the day, his airy daughter “Happy” (Zooey Deschanel, “Yes Man”)—a girl with expensive fashion taste and no inhibitions—arrives at the store with no other intention than to nap for three hours on his newly purchased bed.

It is already apparent by the time Brian covers the girl with a blanket and gingerly removes the plastic demonstration skeleton from her side that something will happen between the two of them. What is not expected is that the obvious tension will be broken just the next day by Happy’s frank question: “Do you have any interest in having sex with me?”

The film’s greatest strength is its ability to invest the everyday with humor. Brian’s life before meeting Happy is one of limited scope. His job, as he describes it, involves selling less than 10 mattresses a month; his social life consists entirely of family dinners with his sleepy 80-year-old father and visits to his friend Larry’s (Brian Avers) psychological laboratory.

But this focus on the mundane never detracts from the movie’s charm. Luminous details—like Brian’s earnest attempts to adopt a Chinese baby despite his young bachelorhood, and Larry’s inexplicable penchant for mixing purple vodka with pure ethanol while on the job—give each character an idiosyncratic tint. The debut script from Adam Nagata and director Matt Aselton is fresh and quirky; the dialogue alone could drive the awkward humor of the piece even without the nuanced talent of Dano and Deschanel.

Furthermore, the film manages to focus on these quirks without overdoing them as indie flicks often do. The silly surface of the film is upheld by beautiful cinematography and careful music choices. A few shots in particular stand out: one at the very start of the film, a view of lower Manhattan ironically dwarfing the movie’s title against the skyscrapers, and later a panorama of a shadowed indoor pool that silhouettes Brian and Happy against a stark white wall. The music, which ranges from instrumental flittings to Masta Killa’s “Brooklyn King,” is wisely used to accent moods rather than to set them.

The real intrigue of the movie, however, comes in its veiled imagery and unanswered questions. The movie begins, for example, with a shot of two white rats struggling to keep from drowning. As they bat their tiny pink paws against the glass sides of a lab tank, Larry explains his observation that anti-depressants make the rats less likely to give up. Over the course of the film, Brian also finds himself striving more and more to keep his head above water, so to speak, as he begins to overcome the bizarre hurdles thrown his way.

In one example of such a task, Brian finds himself carting the obese Mr. Lolly back and forth from the chiropractor. On the ride, Happy’s father makes a point about the interplay of chance and control in health and happiness. Speaking of a brain tumor he experienced, he takes full credit for ridding himself of cancer: “I mapped the pathology of the cancer with my mind—very Chinese. Then I moved it.” The film’s absurdity is perfectly exemplified in the scene that follows: a shot of Mr. Lolly coughing up a brownish-orange tumor in his bathroom. Likewise, the unidentified and aimlessly violent homeless man who chases Brian throughout much of the movie seems to be more a metaphor for Brian’s demons of insecurity than any real person.

The film thus touches on a kind of magical realism in dealing with chance and control—and perhaps, for the success of the ending, it is best that it does. The conscious rejection of pure realism serves to de-emphasize the role of the filmmakers, just as Happy’s entrance into Brian’s life threatens his control of his own fate. What is gigantic in the film, then, is simply the accumulation of moments that somehow amount to a turnaround for Brian; the title magnifies the importance of each minute battle won in everyday life.