Sleeping Giant
Saturday, April 30th, 2016 1:34 pm—FilmSleeping Giant (Canada 2015, Adventure/Drama), Writers: Andrew Cividino, Blain Watters, Aaron Yeger; Director: Andrew Cividino
When the credits rolled on Sleeping Giant last night, the audience was completely silent for a beat or two, before erupting into applause. That’s the impact this movie has. It’s raw, real and chilling, and it gets into your head—and heart—in a way that few films do.
Sleeping Giant is adapted from writer/director Andrew Cividino’s 2014 short film of the same name. Set in Thunder Bay, Ontario, the movie spends a few summer weeks hanging out with Adam (Jackson Martin), Riley (Reece Moffett) and Nate (Nick Serino), three teens cottaging with their families on the shores of Lake Superior, near the majestic Sleeping Giant Provincial Park.
Adam stays with his well-to-do parents in their spacious abode. Riley and Nate, cousins, crash at a much smaller pad belonging to Nate’s grandma (Rita Serino). The three boys’ disparate backgrounds go beyond socioeconomics. Adam is nurtured and sheltered, for better and for worse; he’s more reserved, better mannered. Riley and Nate, on the other hand, talk rough and play rough. They’re destructive and violent with their actions and their words—especially Nate, who constantly makes a show of being stronger, raunchier and more experienced than the others.
Sleeping Giant has a few twists to its story, involving Adam’s less-than-honourable father (David Disher), and his friend Taylor (Katelyn McKerracher), an attractive teen girl who becomes a point of contention between him and Riley. But it’s mainly a summer coming-of-age story, with the three boys standing atop a pivotal cliff, deciding which way to jump—what kind of adults they will become.
A lot of this film is terrifying to watch. Seeing the trouble the boys get into, being privy to their often volatile thought processes, realizing how malleable they are; it’s a sobering reminder of the past, of how wrong things could have gone, and of what could happen in the future, what’s going on right now. It also makes me grateful for the grounded, responsible teens in my own life. Because in Sleeping Giant, things take a dive for the worse.
Walking into the theatre last night, the title of The Weeknd’s album Beauty Behind the Madness came to mind. The film does venture into that territory, or perhaps also the madness behind the beauty. These boys have potential; even Nate shows glimpses of good qualities, like intelligence and honesty, and of wanting to do more with himself. They’re at such a delicate age, each one wrestling with their own sleeping giant—id vs. ego, and the submerged darkness that threatens to take over when their burgeoning identities are threatened.
Adam, Riley and Nate don’t really know who they are yet. The film even suggests, tacitly, that Adam may be questioning his sexuality, with its lingering shots of Adam and Riley tussling, or Adam’s lingering gaze that often favours Riley over Taylor.
Watching Sleeping Giant, it was hard not to reflect on my own coming-of-age movie, Sight Lines, a short that was shot in the summer of 2002 around 1000 Islands in Gananoque, Ontario. Not to suggest that my movie is on par with Cividino’s, but it shares many elements with Sleeping Giant, from 13-year-old Fletcher’s (David Coomber) false bravado about drugs and sexual experience, and his destructive tendencies (both idle and pointed), to the cliff-jumping scene.
There are certain shared experiences about being a young teen in Canada, and about cottage living, that Cividino really captures in Sleeping Giant, making the film easy to relate to.
A large part of the credit for this goes to the extraordinary performances from the three leads. Moffett and Serino are real-life cousins, reprising their roles from the short version of Sleeping Giant. They have no prior acting experience, and perhaps because of that, achieve very real, seemingly improvised delivery. (In fact, much of the cast features non-actors or first-time actors, including Moffett and Serino’s actual grandmother as Nate’s grandma, to good effect.) Martin, who had already wet his feet in the acting world, still arrives at the same nuance and intense realism, bringing incredible subtly to Adam as he experiments with the boundaries of honesty and manipulation, compassion and cruelty.
It’s hard not to notice the contrast between the youth’s naturalistic performances and the stilted delivery from some of the adult actors, most notably Disher (ironically, the most experienced of the performers). Adam’s dad is a real dick, to use the kids’ lingo. He comments on Taylor being “new and improved” and advises 15-year-old Adam to “tap that” while the opportunity is still available. He also makes lame attempts to appear cool in front of Adam’s friends. So I wondered at times if Cividino directed Disher to deliver the awkward performance he does, to make him even less relatable or likeable.
I don’t know about that. But whatever the case, Disher’s relatively weak performance is one of the few detractions from an otherwise successful film.
From the opening sequence that surveys Sleeping Giant Provincial Park to the tune of Bruce Peninsula’s pulsing, foreboding score, to a perfect final moment that says everything without uttering a word—the ending that left the audience speechless—Sleeping Giant is imposing, impressive and important, as a work of art and a reflection of humanity.
For more insights into the film and how it was made, check out Cinemablographer’s recent interview with Cividino.
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This post is dedicated to MJP, who introduced me to Thunder Bay and who works hard to help youth navigate the perils of their own sleeping giants.
This was such a great review that I went to see Sleeping Giant the following day! I also thought of your film Sight Lines when I first heard about this movie, and I love the way both films demonstrated the significant social development adolescents often experience during unstructured summer holidays where they are exposed to people outside of their usual circles. This can be such an exciting and positive experience, but for those who have not had practise exercising good decision making and feel so negatively or ambivalent about their own well being, it can also be very dangerous. I agree that the writing and acting and cinematography all had a very raw and natural feel. I loved the metaphor of cliff diving and sleeping giants as you described it in your review, and the use of foreshadowing in the movie. It was a very powerful and moving experience!
Thank you so much for the lovely dedication… You gotta have someone in your corner when that sleeping giant awakens!
Thanks so much, Meg! I’m really glad you liked the review and the film. You’re the best!