Livin' the Dream

I love films about America. I think that as a subject, you would be hard-pressed to find a grander and more beautiful subject to study through images and characters. The very best cinema in this country has been self-reflexive, inquiring into the nuances of the mythic American Dream: no matter where you come from or who you are, here you have a land that if you can imagine it ... you can have it. Of course there is The Godfather trilogy, Gone With the Wind, Legends of the Fall, Casino (anything by Scorcese, actually)... and then there is this gem, Giant.
It has been a long time since I was so gripped by such an epic tale. I had always known of it only as "Jame's Dean's last film." The shot of Dean in the back of the convertible with his feet up has become an iconic image. The context of that shot makes it even better. Dean is the rags to riches dandy in this film, the poor outsider who makes it to the top of the social echelons but never gets what he really wants, the girl. The girl, in this case, is Elizabeth Taylor, the wife of Texas Rancher, Bick Benedict (a stellar performance by Rock Hudson, who would have made a fantastic Bruce Wayne). Taylor and Dean were both only 23 when they starred in this film, but they play their characters into their 60's with the kind of certainty that makes them timeless in the pantheon of American actors. Dean's final drunken soliloquy in an empty ballroom is disarmingly real, like something that you would expect in a PT Anderson scene. Taylor plays a fiercely gorgeous strong minded Eastern woman who is layin down the "women's lib" line on the Texan patriarchy 40 years before the advent of bra burning...
This film deals with topics as broad as sexism, racism, politics, and class warfare without ever losing its focus on its characters and their own inner turmoil, familial dissapointments, and joys. The cinematography is at once epic in its scope and tender in its detail. The wide angle lens and long shots make for some greatly framed scenes. In one of the films later moments, the family is assembled in a hotel suite, the characters placed assymetrically balanced from the background on the hotel balcony to the foreground,at a desk and couch where a young Dennis Hopper argues with Rock Hudson about institutionalized racism in Texas.
I would recommend this film to anyone who misses a bit of substance with their cinema. Its a bit long: at 3 hours, you get the feeling that this could have been a good mini-series, but to me every moment is necessary. I even found myself looking back and wanting to know more about certain characters, feeling that there were pieces missing still. An incredibly under-rated film. A trio of the screen's finest actors in their prime. Texas. The American Dream.