Big Fish

What's the Plot?

Will Bloom (Billy Crudup) receives a phone call from his mother, Sandra (Jessica Lange) with regards to his father that he hasn't spoken to in years. Will left the small town of Ashton, Alabama, his home, to get out from under his father's - Edward (Albert Finney) - formidable shadow. Edward has become ill and Sandra hopes to reconcile them before it becomes too late for both of them. Everyone that ever met Edward was charmed by the man and his stories, except for Will, who, upon growing up, has come to the conclusion that he has never known who his father was. Nor will he know unless he confronts him to find out who he is and what was true with regards to his life and the colourful stories he wove about it. As Edward begins to tell his stories to Will's wife, Josephine (Marion Cotillard), about his exploits as a young man (Ewan McGregor), Will finds himself trying to separate what he believes to be fact from fiction in his father's tales involving giants, werewolves, conjoined Korean lounge singers, a witch with a glass eye that can see the future and, of course the big fish that has never been caught. Except by Edward, that is !

The Review

Burton has brought to the screen imagery that cannot be easily categorised or forgotten, from Edward Scissorhands to The Nightmare Before Christmas and countless others. Here, with Big Fish, he has made his best cross-over movie that spans his personalised, enchanting world of colours and oddness, with a more down-to-earth telling of a father and his son trying to understand and find each other again before it's too late. The story that sees Finney as the older Edward, virtually bed-ridden yet still spinning tales, is the kind that you would expect from a "normal" Hollywood film with straight forward camera work and plain, recognisable buildings, along with steady pacing and solid acting.

It's when his tales manifest themselves upon the screen and McGregor takes over that the "world through the lens of a weird genius" takes hold and everything changes, from the sets to the acting. Both Finney and McGregor are mesmerising in their joint role of one man's life which, upon reflection, begins to feel a little like a surreal version of Forrest Gump except that Bloom changed the lives that he touched and not world events as Gump did. Finney, along with Lange, have the harder of the 2 stories, whilst McGregor and Lange's younger version - Alison Lohman - are allowed to go to the extremes to match the set pieces that range from the heart-warming (Bloom's romancing of Sandra via a field of daffodils ) through to nods to Burton's previous works' (a forest of menacing trees - Sleepy Hollow; a perfect town full of mowed lawns - Edward Scissorhands; Blooms' tie has the Nightmare Before Christmas logo on it).

Collaborator's of Burton return in eye-catching cameo's - Danny DeVito as a circus owner and Helena Bonham Carter in 2 roles as the witch and Bloom's possible affair. Big Fish is a truly wondrous experience, with a beautiful mixture of fun, the absurd and heart-warming that should culminate in a tear-inducing finale that makes you want to watch it all over again and relive the tales that you should have been told when you were a child. Oscars please

STEVE'S SCORE

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