BURTON,
Tim. Big Fish. 2003. United States: Columbia Pictures. 126”.
Tim
Burton is an American film director, film producer, writer and artist, known
for his dark, quirky-themed films such as Beetlejuice, Edward
Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas or Sleepy Hollow,
including box-office hits such as Batman, Planet of the Apes, Charlie
and the Chocolate Factory or Alice in Wonderland. Most of his films capture
a dark and sinister atmosphere, using dark, grey and red colours, pumpkins,
scarecrows and terror film’s buildings in their background. Nevertheless, some
of his films are located in fantastic worlds characterized by weird scenarios filled
with bent trees in pastel and primary colours, outrageous backgrounds, clowns,
butterflies and misfits and enigmatic characters.
Big Fish, which is performed by some of
the Tim Burton’s recurrent actors such as Danny DeVito and Helena Bonham Carter,
fulfils these characteristics and is based on the novel Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions by Daniel Wallace.
This
film, with Ewan McGregor in the male lead, begins when William and his wife
Josephine go visit Williams’ father Edward, who is badly ill. William had not
talked to his father during years because he had always been telling fantastic
tales about his life, so he had the feeling he did not really know him.
The
film shows in flashbacks Edward’s life recounted by himself to Josephine. These
tales take place since Edward was a child and he was confined during three
years to a bed because his body was growing too fast until his son was born but
he was not there because he was fishing the bigger fish no one had seen before.
All
the tales had a lot of extraordinary characteristics, such as giants, a circus
owner who is also a werewolf and a witch who predicts how will be Edward’s death,
so his son William does not believe in him and is very worried about their
relationship. But when William, who was desperately trying to find a terrible
truth about his father, finds out that he is in the hospital, he comes and
tells him a tale about his death, the same that the witch had predicted several
years before: Edward is carried by his son to a lake, where there are all the
persons who have appeared in his life, and his is transformed into a fish, a big fish.
Then,
when Edward finally dies and the funeral takes place, all the characters that
appeared in his tales, but without the unreal characteristics he used to tell,
where there, and William realizes that it doesn’t really matters if his father’s
tales were not completely real because Edward was a loved man who also loved
his son, the only problem was that he was too
big for this world.
That’s
a poignant ending that can easily move you to tears (I wasn’t an exception
myself) about forgiveness and reconciliation between a father and a son.
I
consider myself a big fan of Tim Burton’s film and I was really taken with that
film. It has not only a beautiful and touching plot, but the characters and
backgrounds, such as the lovely town of Spectre, are amazing too.
As
far as I am concerned, Big Fish is an
amazing, highly recommended film, especially for those who like poignant
stories with a touch of fantasy and comedy.
