Big Fish

Big Fish is a 2003 movie directed by Tim Burton and written by John August, starring Ewan McGregor, Albert Finney, Billy Crudup and Jessica Lange. It is based on the novel Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions by Daniel Wallace.

The film is much less gothic than some of Burton's other works such as Edward Scissorhands and Sleepy Hollow. Big Fish received four Golden Globe nominations and one Oscar nomination for Danny Elfman's original score.

Plot

The film follows the incredible life story of Edward Bloom (McGregor/Finney) and his relationship with his son, Will (Crudup). In the beginning of the film, Will hasn't talked to his father for years, following an incident that assured his belief that his father was a liar who couldn't care less about his family. He approaches him again only after he learns that his father is dying.

The movie is portrayed through flashbacks, as Will tries to recall and piece together the stories his father used to tell him about his many adventures and how he lived his life, which he believes to be tall tales and impossible to believe. Bloom's stories contain fantasy elements: a witch, a giant, a werewolf, and so on, showing him as a lucky hero with few personal flaws.

Will sets out to grasp the idea behind these stories and to discover the truth about the real Edward Bloom. It turns out that Edward's stories are merely exaggerations of equally unbelievable though true events (e.g., Edward meets a pair of conjoined twins but at the end they are revealed to be separate identical twins). At the end though, Will manages to come to terms with his father's need to live an extraordinary life. At the final moments of his father's life, Will concocts an amazingly wild story that send his father Edward to the lake where he turns into a fish.

The ending of the movie is bittersweet in the sense that before Edward Bloom passed away, his son managed to forgive his father for all his deception. However, the ending does not leave much doubt that his father's stories were indeed exaggerations of true events.

Cast

Ewan McGregor - young Ed Bloom
Albert Finney - senior Ed Bloom
Jessica Lange - senior Sandra Bloom
Alison Lohman - young Sandra Bloom
Billy Crudup - Will Bloom
Helena Bonham Carter - Jenny (old), The Witch
Danny DeVito - Amos Calloway
Steve Buscemi - Norther Winslow
Matthew McGrory - Karl the Giant
David Denman - Don Price (Age 18-22)
Missi Pyle - Mildred
Loudon Wainwright III - Beamen
Ada Tai - Ping
Arlene Tai - Jing
Robert Guillaume - Dr. Bennett
Miley Cyrus-Ruthie

Trivia

The film included an appearance by former child actor Billy Redden, famous as the banjo-playing mentally handicapped mountain boy named Lonny in the acclaimed 1972 film Deliverance. In the December 23, 2003 issue of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution director Tim Burton was quoted as saying he wanted Redden in the film as a character sitting on a porch with a banjo because "I never forgot that image."
A red 1966 Dodge Charger figuring prominently in the film as young Edward Bloom's car was portrayed by four different cars in various sequences of the movie.
Most of the story is set in and around the fictional town of Ashton, Alabama. Most of the landmarks of Ashton actually exist in Wetumpka, Alabama where principal shooting took place.
The Yellowcard song "How I Go" is based on Big Fish.
During the plane flight, Will Bloom sees a child doing a shadow puppet of a bat the same way The Penguin did it in Tim Burton's earlier film, Batman Returns.
The song played during the closing credits is Pearl Jam's Man of the Hour, which was requested specially by Tim Burton for the film.

External links

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Plot

Cast

Trivia

External links