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Big Fish
Ewan McGregor and Albert Finney star as young and old incarnations of Edward Bloom, a teller of tall tales to his disbelieving son Billy Crudup. Charming yarn from Tim Burton
"In telling the story of my father, it's hard to separate fact from fiction. But that's the kind of story it is." So says William Bloom (Crudup) during the opening stages of Tim Burton's literally fabulous Big Fish. Bloom's father is Edward Bloom (Finney), an old codger who may be largely benign but is deemed a bullshitter by his son, and a selfish one at that. Edward's endless recounting of yarns about himself has distanced father and son. But when Edward is diagnosed with terminal cancer, William returns to the family home to try and make his peace, and find out who his father really is. Bed-bound, and with an audience of not just the cynical William but also his receptive wife Josephine (Cottillard), Edward recounts his remarkable life in fragments. The most imaginative and pluckiest kid in his small town home of Ashton, Alabama, Edward Bloom was forced to spend years in bed because of accelerated growth, resolving that a "Giant man cannot have an ordinary life". He doesn't physically grow into a giant, rather "I was the biggest thing that Ashton had ever seen". The teenage Bloom (McGregor) meets a real giant soon enough though - one who has been eating his way through local farm stock. After bravely confronting the giant, Karl (McGrory), they become friends and leave town together. Edward's travels take him to the idyllic limbo town of Spectre, and on to a circus. It's here he spots the woman he knows will be his wife - but to learn more about her from circus owner/ringmaster Amos Calloway (DeVito), Edward must toil for years, getting a tidbit of information every month. Through the course of the film Edward tells a version of his entire life story. Burton's narrative, based on a book by Daniel Wallace and scripted by John August (the man behind both Charlie's Angels screenplays), flits back and forth between the present and Bloom's version of the past, between locations as diverse as suburban America and Korea during the war. This is handled craftily by Burton and August (whose earlier Go also avoided conventional narrative structure). As for the two Brits playing the Alabama-born Bloom, McGregor provides his usual charisma and gets by with a mildly dubious accent, while Finney's performance (a tricky one, as it's largely bed bound) combines the twinkle of an old charmer with the disbelief of one who's lived a vigorous life but is now faced with death. The supporting cast is rich: DeVito is fun as the showman with a peculiar secret; Buscemi lightly plays "Ashton's greatest poet", who is stuck at Spectre before escaping to a life of financial crime (first in banks, armed with a gun, then on Wall Street); Bonham-Carter crops up as both a witch and as a woman in love with Bloom; Lange and Lohman play old and young versions of Edward's wife, Sandra. Big Fish is Burton's most successful integration yet of his weird imaginings into an accessible, well-constructed world. Earlier films like Edward Scissorhands might seem more distinctive, but the director's vision was dense and, for many, not entirely accessible. Here, the weirdness is less intensely gothic, and includes such motifs as a giant catfish ("there are some fish that cannot be caught" - though Bloom has a wily technique to do just that), conjoined Korean cabaret singers, and a lovely scene when Edward first spies Sandra at the circus. "They say that when you meet the love of your life, time stops. And that's true," he says, as she stands in a nimbus of light and he moves towards her, past frozen performers and through a cloud of floating popcorn. As well as being a joy, Big Fish also contains an interesting essay. Burton asserts that storytelling, here big movie production, is something that can accommodate the whimsical, the fantastical and the dreamlike, and still be relevant and assertive. Grim reality - something the director's career has proved his distaste for - isn't a prerequisite of crafting stories to inspire or to instruct (the film covers father/son relations and facing up to mortality). Big Fish is both a celebration of the folk tale - played out amid subtly warped Americana - and an eccentric history of mid-late 20th century America. Verdict Varied, inventive, joyful and even very touching - full compensation for the disappointment that was the director's "re-imagining" of Planet Of The Apes. |
