‘Big Fish’

Director Tim Burton delivers a film that straddles the line between fantasy and reality.

By: Bob Brown

A terrifying witch, Helena Bonham Carter and a jolly giant, Matthew McGrory, are all part of Ed Bloom’s tall tales in Tim Burton’s Big Fish.

   This is a fish story to end all fish stories. John Wallace’s novel Big Fish is a series of self-centered tall tales from the mouth of Alabama salesman/adventurer Ed Bloom. His son, Will, who has heard them all, can’t seem to penetrate to the core of his father’s true self. The last straw is Will’s wedding day, when Dad dominates the after-dinner toast with a far-fetched story about a big fish he caught with his wedding ring as a lure. Threaded through the series of Ed’s fantastic flashbacks is the ongoing story of Will’s attempt to connect with a father whose tales distance him from reality.
   Tim Burton (Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Ed Wood) is an appropriate director for this picture, which straddles the line between fantasy and reality, being perpetually off-kilter so that the division is murky. Like some of Burton’s other films, this one takes an outsized figure and humanizes him through the love of a woman. What keeps Ed Bloom centered through all his subsequent adventures is the first one — his pursuit and winning of Sandra. That enduring love-adventure might serve as a model for a son who is just starting out with his bride, Josephine.
   Burton’s work often has the magical-realistic look of places out of time (e.g., Sleepy Hollow), and this one, set in rural Alabama, is no exception. Dennis Gassner, who has assisted the Coen brothers (O Brother, Where Art Thou?), is largely responsible for creating the hyper-reality. It’s a drowned, decaying land of the imagination, populated by a circus of giants, midgets, conjoined twins and the odd werewolf, not to mention a town of zombie-like happy people. The real Alabama was surreal enough to stand for itself when locations were scouted. Water, a main thematic element (as it would be in a story centered on a fish), is important. Only Alabama rivers and streams were photographed. The "real" world that Will inhabits is, ironically, Paris, France, the city of romance, where he is an international journalist.
   Will’s wife is played by prolific French actress Marion Cotillard, for whom this seems to be her only English-language film to date. The elder Ed is portrayed by Albert Finney, who has grown even more corpulent than our last sightings of him on the big screen (Erin Brockovich, Traffic). For him, a role like this is a natural. Finney considers acting his way to transcend a natural tendency to look at life factually and logically. For the younger Ed, the producers chose Scottish actor Ewan McGregor (Moulin Rouge), who bears an uncanny resemblance to Finney at McGregor’s age. Other stars populate the cast in even minor roles: Billy Crudup (Almost Famous) is Will, Jessica Lange is the elder Sandra and Alison Lohman (Matchstick Men) is her younger counterpart, Helena Bonham Carter is a witch and a piano teacher, Danny DeVito is a ringmaster, and Steve Buscemi plays a poet who leaves poetry behind in a few memorable scenes.
   The one character who appears consistently throughout the film is Karl the giant, played with sensitivity by Matthew McGrory, a real giant who happens also to have a law degree and the world’s largest shoe size (29½). His sartorial pilgrim’s progress goes from a robe of rat skins, to sawed-off suitcase shoes, to a tent-sized suit.
   Danny Elfman, a frequent collaborator with Burton ever since the director became a fan of Elfman’s rock group Oingo-Boingo, scored Big Fish. The music has the sheen and mystery to go with the settings, although it’s not so forward as in other Elfman work.
   A movie like this very much depends on the skill of its cast and its look and sound, because the tales themselves, although mildly interesting, are too disjointed to make you yearn to know what happens next. Viewers may find themselves, like Will, anxious to get on with it, or to find out what really makes Ed tick. What is he hiding behind all these patently phony tales about his amazing adventures? Will thinks a secret family on the side may explain his father’s extended absences over the years. The story never really penetrates Ed’s mask. We begin to see him as the product of his tales, or a very good tale-teller, but not as a flesh-and-blood person. Something’s got to give for father and son to connect. The task is more urgent than ever, because Ed has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Will wants to be able to tell his own child-to-be what his grandpa was really like.
   The movie is a heartwarming story of father and son and of enduring romance. Unlike other picaresque adventure tales for the screen, especially Terry Gilliam’s (Time Bandits, The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen), this one is ultimately earthbound (or waterborne, so to speak). It never takes wing, although it does take fins.
Rated PG-13. Contains a fight scene, some images of nudity and a suggestive reference.