I just saw the movie last night and I was just curious as to what other people took from the movie. How did you interpret it, what metaphors did you see? Feel free to just talk about the movie as well!
I had a thread or two on this movie already, but they have gone into oblivion. Anyway…I would like to see it again, mainly because the last act was disrupted twice by idiotic late, noisy people. I was really enjoying it. I had read the book and now I wish I hadn’t done that first, because they don’t include most of Edward’s goofy jokes in the film.
That said, it was a wonderful alternative to the death and destruction/bloody battlefield movies out there (nothing against them, but I needed a break). It is beautifully photographed, well acted and directed, creative and a pleasant holiday surprise. Ewan MacGregor did a very good Alabama accent, as did Albert Finney, but I don’t think Helena B-C quite had it down. Too bad Jessica Lange couldn’t have had more screen time.
Highly recommended, at any rate.
“Big Fish”, like “Something’s Gotta Give” both amazed me in that they had “women’s fantasy endings”. I.e., the guy did the Thing That Women Want In Their Dreams (But Which Never, Ever, Happen In Real Life). I.e.,
family reconciliation and jerk male reform.
Since neither of these has ever been documented in the whole history of our species, these movies had endings that just plain sucked. But at least SGG was nice up to the ending. I kept watching BF cause I didn’t have anything better to do.
It was an ok movie, but I don’t get all the acclaim, or why it’s rated as 8.0 at imdb (I gave it a 6). It would have been less jarring if it was mostly fantasy, or mostly drama, but the near equal - say 40% drama/60% fantasy- didn’t please me. It seemed like it didn’t know which type of movie it wanted to be, so it settled uncomfortably on being not quite either.
I never really thought of Alison Lohman as looking like Jessica Lange before, but she was perfect to play her as younger. They looked a lot more alike than Ewan McGregor and Albert Finney to say the least.
I have not (yet) seen this movie, but I just wanted to say that my friend* Bob’s dog Asa is in this movie. She’s a slightly oversized toy poodle (white), and publicity pictures show her looking out of a fat man’s stomach. I hear she has several scenes, and is quite good.
People who know what they’re talking about are now welcome to return to their discussion. I just wanted to bask in reflected glory.
*OK, more like acquaintance. But still…
Not a great movie, but it was worth the price of admission. I found myself waiting impatiently for the next fantasy interlude. It was entertaining, and not as predictable as most Hollywood swill these days. Every human emotion was adequately stimulated. Not a must-see, but if you are going to the movies, this one is probably as good or better than anything else showing at this time.
Hmm, I had the exact opposite reaction. All the accents seemed wrong to me except for Bonham-Carter’s. In fact, she stood out for me because I thought she did such a good job. (To be fair, Robert Guillaume and Jessica Lange did a good job, but they weren’t in it enough.) It wouldn’t have been such a big deal, but it was distracting for me, especially the kids at the beginning. I was especially perplexed, because the whole thing was filmed on location in Alabama; couldn’t they have just listened to the people around there?
As far as the movie as a whole, ehh. It did make me want to read the book, because the material seemed like it would benefit from more depth. The fantasy sequences were neat enough, but there just wasn’t enough there. A movie like that has to work on spectacle, and it wasn’t spectacular enough – it all felt like stuff I’d seen before. The exception was the sequence where Bloom parachutes onto the stage and meets the twins; that was pretty cool, and the “English to Asian” dictionary was a great touch.
Of course, in the interest of full disclosure I should point out that I was crying like a mafia widow at the end, but that’s not saying much. I’m easily manipulated.
So it wasn’t as maudlin as I’d heard from some people, but it wasn’t as wondrous as the trailers made it look. Now I’ve just got to put the book on my list.
Have you ever seen young Albert Finney? He looks so much like Ewan McGregor it’s scary
Although I thought at first that it should have carried itself on spectacle as SolGrundy thinks, the main conflicting theme - how do we rectify fantasy with reality - was a lot more subtle than the vast majority of films that get by on story. I thought they handled it very well, and the answer wasn’t just the obvious, “The stories are based on reality, so in the end they’re the same thing” or even “As long as the basic idea of the metaphor of the story gets through, you get the main idea, and that’s what matters.”
[spoiler]However, I did think that Will’s voiceover at the end was pretty hackneyed, after that wonderful climax. (“A man becomes his stories, and in that way he achieves immortality.”)
When Will told a story of his own - the river scene - and then realized how and in what ways it fit the corresponding reality - the funeral scene to follow - he began to understand his father’s stories in a way that the people who appreciated them as spectacle never did. This was the best part for me.[/spoiler]
I also liked the number of different levels that “big fish” worked on. 
I finally saw this last night and was extremely disappointed. As is my practice, I didn’t read Ebert’s review until after seeing the movie. I pretty much agreed with what he said – up to and including giving it 2-1/2 stars.
I realized last night that my beef with Tim Burton is the same as my beef with the Coen Brothers – their distance from human emotion. Both (all?) do quirkiness and great visuals – and both/all are so freaked out by actual feelings that they either skip that element totally or, as in Big Fish, do a tone-deaf version that makes it seem like emotion is an alien concept to them, perhaps described to them by someone else, perhaps not.
I’m bummed. I really wanted to like this film. Lots of eye candy, though – Ewan McGregor or Billy Crudup – whaddya think, ladies, which is yummier? 
Saw it last night, and while it was certainly not without flaws, it struck me as Burton’s best in years and something of an instant classic. The sequences with Carl the Giant, the first visit to Spectre, and the compeletely daffy bit in Korea will stick with me for a long time. Nevertheless, I feel a bit used due to the blatant emotional manipulation that was going on, particularly in the last half-hour. My father died from a long cancer-related illness a couple of years ago, it wasn’t nearly as trouble-free as shown in the film, and I too had communication issues with him, which I never did resolve before his passing. So, like much of the theater, I ended up crying like a little girl at the end, even though I knew I was being played shamelessly.
Structurally. the fantasy parts were so much fun that the rest pales to mere shadows in comparison. Didn’t much care for Billy Crudup. And yeah, the southern accents of most of the cast were pretty dodgy.
This is a common complaint, and one I’ve never understood in the slightest. Emotion, specifically a deep love for the eccentricities and naive blindnesses of their characters, infuses most of the Coens and Burton’s best work; see the behavior of the main characters in the former’s Miller’s Crossing, and the latter’s Edward Scissorhands.
What these directors have not done, in most cases, is substitute cheap sentimentality for heartfelt emotion. In fact, however, even though I liked the film overall, there sure seemed to be a lot of cheap sentimentality on display in Big Fish, and the critics that had a beef with the film seemed to dislike it mainly on those grounds.
I’ve seen the movie twice now and I’m still not clear on what was true and what was fantasy in the stories. The people at least seemed to be real. Does anyone have a clear take on this?
Hmm, I see your point – I just don’t agree with it. From both of these directors my sense (and this is strictly IMHO) is that there’s a feeling of superiority to the people whose quirks he’s presenting. It’s that superiority/distance that I find so off-putting. For the Coens – well, I haven’t seen Miller’s Crossing (and I’m currently dating a Coens fan who tells me I shoud) – but I started noticing it in Fargo; IMHO, even our heroine Marge, the pregnant cop, was treated with a wink and a nod.
For Tim Burton – he has done a couple of movies I’ve liked a lot, like Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood. And, yes, there’s some sympathy toward some of the characters in these films. OTOH, Mars Attacks could have been a wonderful film had he given a little less thought to the special effects and a little more thought to the characters. I’m thinking here of Galaxy Quest, another takeoff/homage film that worked a lot better.
I have to admit I was :rolleyes: throughout most of the movie. I didn’t like it very much.
One part I did enjoy - the story of the siamese twins. I was seeing the movie with a friend who had just come back from China and his Filipina girlfriend. Some Chinese characters were visible on screen, and my friend whispered “Heh, I can read that”, to which his girlfriend replied “But they’re speaking tagalog!” - then I realized “Wait, the writing on that letter is Korean.” It was a cute little moment.
Oh, yeah, I’ll agree with that. That’s a pretty cold film for sure.
I liked it a lot. I see that someone mentioned s/he felt the movie couldn’t decide whether to be drama or fantasy–but for me, that was the best part about the film. I liked the way they were tangled together. The imagery was wonderful, and the film was just beautiful in general–from the house with the white picket fence to the circus. I liked the layers in the film, the questions in raises, and the way the answers were never given to us on a silver platter… It made me laugh, and it made me think. I don’t ask for much more in entertainment.
In both Big Fish and O Brother, Where Art Thou?, you see characters go to superhuman lengths for love. Both directors present a lot of weird characters, and the Coens in particular do that naive thing. But I don’t think they’re condescending about it. I will agree, though, that there approach is different from most- but I don’t think most directors do a good job of putting real emotion onscreen, so that’s not a problem to me.
In terms of what is real and what was not…
Singing Chinese siamese twins were merely singing Chinese twins
Werewold circus impressario merely circus impressario
Huge man-eating giant merely very tall man
Heavenly city (forget name) merely very nice small town
That’s all that I can remember
One question - Anyone ever hear of the poet in the movie? Was he based on anybody that you’ve heard of?
Big Fish hasn’t opened here yet, but I look forward to it. I haven’t noticed in Burton’s work how he deals with feelings although I recall both Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood expressing very positive human values within the constraints of two pretty odd movies.
Recently I argued that one of the things stuffing up modern society is the ubiquitous nature of film and television and how indoctrinated people have become to the overblown sentimentality of both media. I actually used the Coen brothers as a contra example. There representation of people (including Marge) strikes me as far more real than most of what Hollywood has to offer. I find most of Hollywood’s mainstream attempts at “emotion” to be cheap and mawkish, and good efforts are the exception rather than the rule. I think people have become so used to cheap appeals to the emotions that they intrude on other events. Given time to think about it “creative” types go for what will work rather than what is honest. This thought first occured to me at the time of the anniversary of 9/11 when much that took place seemed to me to be creepy rather than relevant.
I loved this movie. So much so, in fact, that I’d put it among my 10 Favorites. Not sure what it would knock off, but it’s certainly on the list.
I will also cop to crying profusely during the final reel.
I would recommend this movie to anyone, anywhere.