Big Fan
Writer/director Robert Siegel previously made a dramatic splash with his wonderful screenplay for The Wrestler. With Big Fan, Siegel shows his continued facility for taking a sad sack character who might otherwise be branded as a loser and making him sympathetic, even a little heroic in a quietly desperate way. Patton Oswalt turned in a surprising dramatic performance on the TV show Dollhouse; he is here plumbing the dingy depths of his character Paul Aufiero with grace and skill. The character is written somewhat flatly, preventing Oswalt from having many places to go with his performance, but he does a great job.
Paul puts the pathetic in sympathetic, but he has the inner strength of his fandom when nothing else is working out in his life. By this measure, he is happy. By day, he monitors a sleepy parking garage, composing elaborate but natural-sounding rants for a local call-in radio sports show. By night he haunts the fringes of NY Giants games and/or calls in said rants. He has one friend, he lives with his mother, and yet he has achieved a kind of peace. Everyone else is dissatisfied on his behalf. He’s not unhappy, he just lacks the ambition beyond his squalid spartan life to feel dissatisfied. He’s not happy, ever, not really, unless tailgating at a winning Giants game. He is almost the perfect fan except for not being able to afford to attend any games. His radio rants are his sole creative outlet and source of love and pride.
Paul’s life is going along like this when a terrible event derails him. His entire future existence turns on whether he chooses his team, his fandom, over his own interests or not. Oswalt is tremendously good at conveying the empty inner life of this man, and deflecting all the good will and opportunities that come his way. Kevin Corrigan plays his seedy friend with admiration and blankness, he’s always great and here is no exception. Big Fan gets uncommonly dark in the last bit (I won’t say what happens, but it’s a foray into another city) and this act feels a little out of place relative to the rest of the film we’ve just seen, but it also feels very much in character for Paul.
I can’t say I enjoyed Big Fan, as such – perhaps it’s due to my lifelong total disinterest in sports and the script’s failure to help me appreciate the mindset of such a character. I can say that I think Big Fan is quite good and well-made. The Wrestler punched me in the emotional gut, and I felt much less connected to Paul than I did to Randy. Still, it’s worth seeing for Oswalt’s performance and the terrific, natural dialogue.
MPAA Rating R-language and sexuality
Release date 8/28/09
Time in minutes 88
Director Robert Siegel
Studio First Independent Pictures
