Big Fish

Big Fish



It's hard to define your favourite film. When someone puts you on the spot and asks you, you're suddenly struck dumb. Whatever choice you make at the time never really seems right somehow. Later when you have a think about it, you wished you'd said something else.
Now ask anyone who knows me what my favourite is and they'll tell you Kev loves Fight Club. Well, they used to be right...

Directed by Tim Burton, Big Fish is the story of a man, Will (Billy Crudup), who seeks to know his dying father better. Will's father Ed (Albert Finney) only ever told his son tall fantastical tales about his life. Tales that owe more to fiction than genuine fact. Will endeavours to glimpse the real man behind the stories.

The fantasy stories are played out as flashbacks with Ewen McGregor as the young Ed, centre to them all. As he lies in bed dying in the real world, he tells Will how he saved his home town from a lonely giant. How he made friends with a werewolf at the circus. How he saw his destiny in the glass eye of a witch.

Realising that his father will never separate fact from fiction, Will decides to investigate himself. Though what he finds, isn't what he expected. It would seem that the man and the myth are inseperable.

Based on a book by Daniel Wallace, the story couldn't have been any more tailor-made for Burton. His vast gothic imagination is the very mind to transfer this fantasy book to the screen. There are some terrific special effects: The use of forced perspective to make the Giant tower over young Ed; When the circus suddenly halts, everyone freezing, except Ed who walks among the frozen performers; The moment the dying Ed takes his true form as the Big Fish of the title.

Hats off where hats off is due to Ewen McGregor playing the confident, talented hero, Ed, with a convincing southern drawl that perfectly matches Albert Finney's. The two actors work well to create a believable character who wins the audience's hearts, which are duly broken by the time the credits roll.

This film is an example of the very reason cinema was invented. Escapism. Why live in the real world when you can free your mind to fantasy.

Verdict 10/10
My new favourite film.