Big Fish

Rating

Director

Tim Burton

Screenplay

John August (Novel: Daniel Wallace)

Length

125 min.

Starring

Ewan McGregor, Albert Finney, Billy Crudup, Jessica Lange, Alison Lohman, Helena Bonham Carter, Robert Guillaume, Marion Cotillard, Matthew McGrory, David Denman, Missie Pyle, Loudon Wainwright III, Ada Tai, Arlene Tai, Steve Buscemi, Danny DeVito

MPAA Rating

PG-13 (For a fight scene, some images of nudity and a suggestive reference)

Review

Is the reality of fact in truth? Cannot a man tell tall tales that have a kernel of truth? Big Fish is the story of one man’s quest to understand his father after years of hearing legendary stories that seem to say nothing at all.

Ed Bloom (Albert Finney) is dying. He has very little time to live and his son Will (Billy Crudup) wants to know who his father really was before the end. To that end, Will sits by his father’s bed as he slowly drifts towards the grave asking him to tell him the truth about his life that he has heard only in vivid fairy tales.

Finney’s performance is fine as he charismatically re-tells many of the childhood stories he told to Will and to Josephine (Marion Cotillard), Will’s wife. The stories are told in flashback as we see a younger Ed (played with larger-than-life fervor by Ewan McGregor) make his way through a life growing up as a saver of villages, a tamer of giants and a hero of war.

Director Tim Burton returns to the masterful filmmaking he became known for with films like Edward Scissorhands and Batman. With recent missteps Planet of the Apes and Sleepy Hollow clouding theater memories, it’s good to see him making a gigantic splash again.

The settings are amazing and visceral, the marks of Burton’s fanciful style. We live life through the present and the past in stark contrasts. The present is plain and disinteresting. The past is vivid and unfathomable. It’s that larger than life attitude that makes the story so believable. We find ourselves drawn into Ed’s fictitious world and find ourselves whole-heartedly trusting his version of events and when the conclusion arrives, we happily embrace it.

With screenwriter John August’s adept adaptation of Daniel Wallace’s novel, Burton created a film that fits perfectly into the American psyche. How many times have you heard people tell big stories about events that were likely not true? There’s the story of Paul Bunyan. There’s the tale of Johnny Appleseed. And there’s the classic fisherman’s yarn about the gigantic fish that got away. That metaphor is used as the basis of this saga about a quest to find that small kernel of truth that makes the entire journey worth the effort.

Big Fish is the type of film that gives its audience a renewed faith in filmmaking. It makes theater patrons laugh and cry as they take in every delicate and fine-tuned detail. This film is perfect for anyone who ever had a story to tell that made someone else’s day brighter and didn’t care how much truth there was in it.

Review Written

March 25, 2004