Tim Burton’s Big Fish wants to be a movie about the space between a story and the truth. It ends up being a movie about how nice it is to tell stories. That is a smaller thing, and it shows.
The film follows William Bloom (Billy Crudup), a son worn down by a lifetime of his father’s tall tales. Edward Bloom (Albert Finney, and Ewan McGregor as the young version) claims he caught an enormous catfish with his wedding ring as bait on the day Will was born. Will has heard it before. He believes the stories are lies, and the two fall out.
Three years later, Edward is diagnosed with cancer. Will and his pregnant wife Joséphine (Marion Cotillard) travel to Alabama to spend time with him. The rest of the film runs through flashbacks of Edward’s life, staged as a series of fairy tale vignettes.
Trailer, via TrailerTrackerEnglish.
The Witch, the Giant, and the Town of Spectre
Edward’s boyhood encounter with a witch (Helena Bonham Carter) shows him how he will die. It does not faze him. As an adult he finds his home too confining and sets out into the world, where he meets a giant named Karl (Matthew McGrory). The two travel together until a fork in the road splits them up.
Edward crosses a swamp and finds the hidden town of Spectre, where he befriends the poet Norther Winslow and the mayor’s daughter, Jenny (also Bonham Carter). He is not ready to settle down and leaves, promising Jenny he will return. The cast around him is deep:
- Ewan McGregor as young Ed Bloom
- Albert Finney as senior Ed Bloom
- Billy Crudup as Will Bloom
- Jessica Lange and Alison Lohman as Sandra Bloom
- Helena Bonham Carter as Jenny and the Witch
Three Years at the Calloway Circus
The film’s best stretch is the courtship. Edward and Karl take jobs at the Calloway Circus, where Edward falls in love with a woman he can only glimpse. The ringmaster, Amos Calloway, reveals one detail about her each month. Three years pass. Edward discovers Amos is a werewolf, shows no ill will, and is rewarded with her name: Sandra Templeton.
Sandra (Lange as the older woman, Lohman as the younger) rebuffs him at first. Her fiancé, Don Price, beats Edward up. That prompts Sandra to break off the engagement and marry Edward instead. It is the one section where the film’s method — tall tale as emotional shorthand — earns its keep.
A Father, a Son, and a Bedside
Burton’s theme of reconciliation between a dying father and his son carried real weight for him. His own father died in 2000. John August adapted Daniel Wallace’s 1998 novel Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions, having read a manuscript six months before publication and pushed Columbia Pictures to buy the rights.
Steven Spielberg was set to direct before leaving for Catch Me If You Can. Burton and producer Richard D. Zanuck took over after Planet of the Apes, bringing McGregor and Finney aboard. Burton had first spoken with Jack Nicholson about playing Edward, Spielberg’s initial pick.
You can really hear it. You can get your teeth into it. Standard American is much harder.
That is McGregor on the Southern accent, which the Scottish actor found easier than a standard American one. It is the most alive thing in the material, and it points at the problem: the performances are working harder than the script.
What Alabama Gives and What It Costs
Shot on location in Alabama with a Southern Gothic aesthetic, Big Fish premiered in Manhattan on December 4, 2003, opened in limited release on December 10, and went wide on January 9, 2004. It drew seven BAFTA nominations, four Golden Globe nominations, and two Saturn Award nominations.
The craft is not the issue. The film looks like something, and Bonham Carter’s Witch makeup took five hours to apply while she was pregnant and fighting morning sickness made worse by the fumes. Burton even tracked down Billy Redden, a banjo player from Deliverance, then co-owning a restaurant in Clayton, Georgia, to appear on a porch as Edward enters Spectre.
Why the Tall Tales Never Cost Anything
The issue is that none of it coheres into a reckoning. Edward’s stories are the film’s subject, and the film never doubts them. Will’s frustration has no target, and the reconciliation the movie builds toward is never worked through on screen.
Big Fish is one of Burton’s softest films. The Alabama locations and the dual casting of McGregor and Finney are the parts worth keeping. The rest is a warm feeling in search of a movie.
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