Big Fish (2003): A Heartwarming Journey

 

“It is we ourselves who call forth the spirits through our own myth-making. From the matter we use, or wish to use, there arise later on obstacles to our own development and the future development.”              – Pablo Neruda  

As a matter of fact, we live in a hard and rough world. And imagination, the unique power of human mind, has made this world much more livable and vivid. Through imagination we have created innumerable elements and creatures which became very much familiar to us though these elements and creatures are actually “non-existent”. We have fairy tales, we have myths, and we have urban legends… and we live on these stories. This simple yet commonly overlooked fact is presented through an uncommon story and a vivid visual in the movie- “Big Fish“.

Tim Burton has a certain powerful ability of creating original eye-candies but I could not like many of his films. Besides Big Fish, only Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood seemed noteworthy. In this Movie, Tim Burton exceeds himself with the help of two things other than his imaginative visualisation power- a marvellous series of stories within a heart-wrenching story of relationship and perfect performance given by the actors.

The story (or I rather say the main body of the story) builds upon a bizzarre relationship between a father and a son. The son does not like his father as his father- Edward Bloom is a big mouth and used to tell fables which are amusing off course but for son- became annoying over a thousand times of hearing. To the son, Edward is mostly a fake person… but when his father is in his death bed, the son discovered those fables and completely “ridiculous” stories from a new perspective as he discovered his father as a unique person through those stories.

Witch, foretold death, hidden city, mermaid, werewolf, seamese twins, friendly monster-  this movie had every option of showing colorful cinematography, and the director utilised it as nobody could do better. But the main thing about this movie is th very ’soul’ of the movie which will not make you cry but must move you a bit with his warm and kind touch.

Ewan McGregor is one of my few favorite actors of hollywood. And he gave yet another wonderful performance as young Ed Bloom. But who gave the dazzling performance in this film is Albert Finney , as old Ed Bloom. Jessica Lange was indispensable from his charecter too.

 I particularly like these dialogues of Will Bloom and I took these lines as the synopsis of the film-

“A man tells his stories so many times that he becomes the stories. They live on after him, and in that way he becomes immortal.”

Now, let’s focus on the few problems with the movie. Though the story is unconventional in Hollywood context, it is told in a ‘Hollywood’ way- eye catching special effects, very well planned and well executed shots that somtimes it seems too perfect to be original! Well, I’m really feeling bad to find out flaws with this movie!

The tag line of the movie is “An adventure as big as life itself.” But after finishing this movie you may feel that the adventure you just experienced may be bigger than life!