Among Giants

Among Giants

Sometimes films are just centered around actors. There is a story, but it’s only there to give them something to say while they’re being themselves. You can make a movie about the way people talk, what’s in their eyes, their personal style and grace. “Among Giants” is that kind of movie; it’s about Pete Postlethwaite and Rachel Griffiths getting together against all odds, but mostly it’s about them being interesting.

Postlethwaite was in “In The Name Of The Father,” the 1994 Irish film where he played the father of a man wrongly accused of being an IRA bomber; he earned an Oscar nomination for it. Griffiths was also nominated for an Oscar this year; she played the sister of a doomed musician in “Hilary And Jackie.” I’ve seen both actors many times before, and once you’ve looked at them for a little while, you always know how their characters are feeling.

“Among Giants” was written by Simon Beaufoy, who also wrote “The Full Monty,” and once again involves working-class camaraderie and sex this time in the same couple. Postlethwaite is Ray, the foreman of a freelance work gang that signs on to paint a long row of electrical power pylons striding across the English landscape like killer robots from some Japanese sci-fi epic. He’s in his 40s, wiry and ruddy with a fringe of red hair over his big bald dome; he looks like one of those independent truckers who’d rather fight than switch.

Griffiths plays Gerry (or maybe “Jerry,” since nobody ever writes her name down), a backpacker from Australia tramping around the world and climbing any old peak if it takes her fancy: “How long you been out on the road?” Ray asks when they meet. “How long’s a piece of string? You get lonely?” “Yeah, I do.” Something intangible passes between them, and soon she’s back again, asking for a job. Ray’s got his doubts about this woman business, but Gerry points out that she’s a climber; not afraid of heights or work. He gives her a chance. It’s the beginning of a long summer where the guys build campfires to brew up their tea, sleep in vans or tents and spend their days high in the air with paint buckets.

Ray lives in the next town over, and we learn early on that he has an estranged wife and kids; he considers himself divorced already but hasn’t done the paperwork yet. Gerry lives in her tent. She’s a strange little thing: “All I’ve got is a whole bunch of people I’m never gonna see again,” she tells him at one point, “and a whole lot of places I’m never gonna go back to.” One night Ray kisses her. They fall in love.

The complications of their romance provide us with most of our plot; there’s also some counterpoint from details about the other characters in Ray’s gang, especially a young man who sees him as a surrogate father figure. The film is thick with atmosphere it knows its way around those blue collar pubs where everybody wears jeans and cowboy shirts on Friday nights, the band plays C&W and (in one scene that will seem perfectly realistic to British viewers and utterly ludicrous to Americans) the customers line dance while throwing darts at each other’s feet.

The whole story is a trick, but we understand that at some level. The logistics are not clear: Who is the man who hires the work gang? Why does he treat them as illegals? And why is the power off now and scheduled to be turned on at summer’s end? (No prizes for guessing that talk about power is setting us up for a dramatic scene.) Those are questions that can be asked, but the answer is that the entire reality of the film exists only as a backdrop for these two characters.

They’re a strange couple. They’re probably 20 years apart in age. They’re loners by nature. But there’s a confidence about their physical styles that makes them a good fit. They both like to climb, they both work hard and there’s a scene in which they frolic not under a waterfall, mind you, but behind falling sheets of water inside the cooling tower of an electric plant. Never seen that before.

One of the blessings of movies is that they allow us to imagine what it might be like to be someone else. Postlethwaite and Griffiths have, as actors, the ability to suggest people who would be interesting either to know or simply to be; director Sam Miller uses this gift in ways we don’t expect. There comes a moment when Gerry will use her climbing skills to traverse entirely around the four walls of a pub without ever touching ground; haven’t seen that before either.

Watch Among Giants For Free On Gomovies.