Giants Being Lonely, about two boys on a high school baseball team, shows impressive filmmaking skills from co-writer/director Grear Patterson. Familiar, even universal issues of growing up, identity, and intimacy are presented with a lyrical, dreamlike tone. Some scenes are almost a series of stills, as though we are leafing through an old-fashioned scrapbook, with snapshots pasted on black pages, long stretches with no music. The images recall the impressionistic, subjective way our memories are stored.
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The cinematography by Hunter Zimny and editing by Ismael de Diego and producer Olmo Schnabel leave much unexplained, letting our imagination fill in the gaps. This is underscored with the leafy, naturalistic North Carolina setting and the near-absence of technology, which give the story a timeless quality and allow for the kinds of missed connections that cell phones and email have all-but-eliminated from contemporary stories.