Big Fish
Opens Feb 26
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Albert Finney, Billy
Crudup
Director: Tim Burton
Beyond Belief
Big Fish, believe it or not, isn’t about the accuracy
behind Edward Bloom‘s (Albert
Finney) stories, no matter how tall and implausible they seem. Edward is now
old and a dying man, yet he continues talking about his stories like an excited
child, stories which are incidentally harder to swallow than Forrest Gump’s
supposed multiple triumphs. His only son, Will
Bloom (played by Billy Crudup), almost unrecognisable next to his last major
role as a rock n’ roll star in Almost
Famous, now a hard nosed pursuer of fact, as a reporter, is one of those
who doubted him.
On Will’s wedding day, Edward steals his son’s thunder as he narrates
his yarn to everyone’s amazement except Will’s. Those tales from
Edward’s younger days, when he looked suspiciously like Ewan
McGregor, comprise of the unbelievable from a future-reading witch, a menacing
giant to a pair of conjoined Chinese sisters.
Instead of keeping his son amused, the grander Edward’s tales were, the
further the distance is between father and son as Will believes that his father
is a totally unknown entity to him since he can’t recall him ever telling
him the truth.
Hence, this film is also about Will’s chance to understand and know his
father as a real person before cancer claims the latter’s life, and to
reconcile the differences between them. There are 2 landscapes in Big Fish,
one happening in modern day with senior Ed severely ill and the other in good
ol’ Alabama, where Ed was living, disgruntled with small-town life and
in search for greater adventures.
The flashback scenes are tell tale signs of Tim
Burton’s touch – bright colours, whimsical and full of grandeur.
The current timeframe pales in comparison with the flashbacks. In fact, the
incidents happening in Ed’s younger days were much more exciting than
the events in the present day, which were reeking of normalcy.
The difference between Big Fish and Burton’s previous works is half of
Big Fish is set in reality unlike his other fantasy works A
Nightmare Before Christmas. We see Edward Bloom as old as he gets, and hardly
the dashing young man in his Technicolor past. The rest of the present-day characters,
from Will’s wife Josephine Marion
Cotillard, to Sandra Bloom (Jessica
Lange) are bland and lack the magic sparkle unlike the other characters
in the other half of the movie, some of them subhuman even.
The soundtrack of the film is a rather interesting mix, perhaps because of the
nature of the story. As the story moves through the decades, songs from the
respective eras are used. There’s the original music score by Danny
Elfman (who else in a Tim Burton film?), rock n’ roll hits in the
60s from the likes of Elvis Presley, Buddy
Holly and The Allman Brothers,
as well as a Pearl Jam song as the
end credits roll.
Those characters in the younger Edward’s days are a steal to watch, from
Helena Bonham Carter (Planet
of the Apes) doubling as a witch and an secret admirer of Ed, and Steve
Buscemi (Armageddon)
playing a struggling poet with great deprecation and style.
Big Fish traces the life story of an ordinary man who sought extraordinary adventures,
being too big, like the giant he befriended, for the normal life. Whether his
recollections are factual recounts or facts told with flavour is just one tiny
aspect of the film, because Big Fish is much more than that. It is a story on
faith, love, redemption and more importantly, the art of storytelling.
Ratings: 4 out of 5