Big Fish (Tim Burton, 2003)

By Hayley Trowbridge

This review contains spoilers.

Big Fish is quintessential Tim Burton. For any fan of the director these elements are easily identifiable. So as not to bore you with the details I will not be writing about Big Fish as a Tim Burton film but rather just as a film. Apologies for anyone who wanted this review to be Burtonesque.

Big Fish is a film focused on the assessment of the father-son relationship between Edward Bloom (as an old man played by Albert Finney and as a young man played by Ewan McGregor) and Will Bloom (Billy Crudup). After years of not speaking to his father, Will finds out that Edward is dying and rushes home to try to reconnect with him before time slips away. During his return, Will begins to understand his father more and delves into the truth, lies and fictions that have been the wedge between them for years, before ultimately becoming at peace with his father.

The story is presented in a non-liner manner, with extended flashbacks to the young Edward Bloom intercut with segments of the present day events, until ultimately the past and the present collide in the film’s resolution: Will meeting some of the people who he assumed to be fictional characters in his father’s tales. Perhaps this is too conventional and yet another example of a Hollywood ending in which all the loose ends are tied up but for me it works. And why it works is because the whole film is fantastical, unbelievable and sentimental  - so why would the ending be any different?

Big Fish could also be critiqued for not having any real emotional resonance due to it’s fairytale qualities, but with emotive performances from the likes of Albert Finney, who plays the dying Edward Bloom so convincingly and with Ewan McGregor commanding the audience’s attention every second he is on screen, it would be extremely hard not to connect with the characters. Also, the fragmented and sometimes destructive relationship between Will and Edward (however unreal its contextual setting is) has the depth required to make viewers identify with it.

Big Fish is the only film to-date that has ever made me openly cry in a cinema – and this happens now each and every time I watch it on DVD. It’s a film that tends to divide the audience; you either connect with the sentimental depictions of human nature at work within the film or you see the final credits rolling and think, “what was all that emotional tripe about?”.