I love this movie. The more I think about it, the more to
compares to the movie 'Life is Beautiful' from a particular angle. I shall come
to that in greater detail further down in the article. First a little bit of
more information on the movie. ‘Big Fish’ is a 2003 film directed by Tim Burton
starring Albert Finney and Ewan McGregor essaying the older and the younger
versions of the of the protagonist, Edward Bloom, respectively.
I have watched the movies once, it lingered in my memory for
many hours and I have not stopped recommending the movie to fellow movie
enthusiasts ever since. If you are a friend reading this review or
interpretation, as I would like to pompously call it, do watch the movie and if
you happen to be the more generous types buy me the DVD. As I see it, the movie
can be interpreted from three sides and thinking about each of it is what has
made the movie a personal favorite.
The most obvious interpretation of the movie would be that
life gives you something and it is up to you to take it either cheerfully in a grand
positive way with you placed at the center of the universe or just imagine it
to be a bland tiresome journey. Edward Bloom chooses to live life in the first way.
As the film reaches the finish line this is the lesson his son, Will Bloom played
by Billy Crudup, learns.
The movie is about the act of storytelling. By nature, the
act of narrating a story automatically gives the incident you narrate a
dramatic touch. It is not that you lie while anecdoting, if that is the word I
want - you tell the truth but adding to it an element of drama to capture the
attention of your audience. (like Tony Montana says elsewhere - I always tell the truth. Even when I lie.) ‘Big Fish’ is about the act of narrating incidents and
giving them that dramatic touch. At the end of the movie you actually see that all
the fantastic people you come across in Edward’s stories actually exist.
At the centre of the movie is the ongoing father-son conflict.
If you have seen ‘Life is Beautiful’, you must remember that the father tells charming
lies to his son. As the story ends, the father dies. Imagine that the father
comes out successfully of the concentration camp and grows old along with his
son, now the son has become an adult. The father's character never changes, it
is ingrained in his personality - remember the ways in which he woos his girl
in the first half – he has been telling entertaining stories all his life. The
son... the son now has his own individuality and there arises a conflict. The
child loves the fantastic tales the father tells him as a child. The father is
a superhero to the son and listens to all the things the father says with wide-eyed enthusiasm and then when the consciousness and individuality
arises and he becomes an adult, the same stories get tiresome and he looks at
the father as a tedious bore. It is the fall of a hero. Edward Bloom in ‘Big
Fish’ is Guido after he gets out of the camp and Will Bloom is Joshua after his
loss of innocence.
This is one of the best films I have seen and I recommend it to you. The visual style,
which is a hallmark of most of Tim Burton movies, the special effects merging
seamlessly into the storyline, all these details could be read in reviews by
other distinguished movie reviewers.
