The Stuff from Which Legends are Made (contains spoilers!)

Rating: 9/10 (31 January 2004)

The theme of this film is fairly simple; every life's a story, in a sense, and some lives are larger than life, so there's an accretion of things that, while not exactly factual, serve to accent the bigness and wonder of life. Great things become greater with their retelling, whether the person in question is a national hero or a local celebrity. The principle is the key to a certain kind of immortality, and it's a theme of our existence that anyone can see, from the Pharaohs to Abraham Lincoln to Ozzy Osbourne. Small legends get bigger over time, and they continue to grow even when the subject of the legend has long since disappeared from the view of mortal eyes.
The movie was slow in a spot or two, but overall it held together beautifully, with the ending tying everything up very neatly and demonstrating that, despite the cynicism that mythologization engenders in some people, reality is often just below the surface of the myth. A great life, a life of adventures and risk-taking, doesn't need that much embellishment; the flourishes only serve as a preservative. A life needn't be an action-adventure to have been remarkable, nor must it be lived by someone known to the whole of humanity. Any life can be a great one, worthy of becoming the stuff of legends.
If Big Fish is guilty of any shortcoming, it did get a bit overly sentimental at times. Keeping in mind, though, that the whole of the life of the main character is always viewed through somewhat rose-colored glasses (another theme of the movie - eternal optimism), that's very much appropriate in the context of the whole film. A great life ends with a great death because a great story needs a great ending, but even in this, the legend created by William's character for Edward as he lays on his death bed isn't that far from the truth. When the real funeral is held, everyone from Edward's life really is there to see him off, and they're almost as flamboyant and unusual as they were in the stories. Instead of going back into the water and turning into the fish - which was already a legend when Edward was a boy - he goes back into the Earth as those who knew him recount the stories of his life. He hasn't literally become the Big Fish of every fisherman's tall tale, but he's become the same "stuff of legend" of which the river of human memory is composed. Just like the mythical fish, Edward goes on. The big fish's belly was full of eggs; Edward's was full of stories. The eggs insure the continuation, the immortality, of the fish. Edward's stories insure his own. He was the Big Fish all along. With these kinds of themes present, a bit of indulgence in sentimentality is understandable. We're all sentimental about great lives to one degree or another, and the stories of our lives are our own immortality. When Edward, as he lies on his death bed, passes the story-teller mantle to his son, he's given him the most valuable thing he has; not just the stories, but the ability to permit himself to tell them. That's the surprise ending foretold in the witch's glass eye. The mythic world and the mundane world are going to come together in this single, paramount moment. It's why Edward goes back to Spectre; he was there too early the first time to turn it from a mundane little town into the perfect place of myth. The town is "Spectre" because its potential doesn't lie in it's real existence, but in the stuff of Edward's myths.
I have to admit, I was extremely moved by the film. I even shed a few tears, something that I'm not exactly prone to doing, and for good reason. I can't stand sappy tripe for it's own sake, so the sentimentality of most films that go for the tear-jerker is entirely lost on me. This was different. For me, the response was completely involuntary. Sometimes, a thing is too beautiful to resist it.
I know there are a lot of people who don't like this film. I think, at the very least, it's the best thing Tim Burton has done in a very long time. After a few failures (Planet of the Apes and Sleepy Hollow, for instance), it's nice to see a good storyteller come back strongly. I'm not sure who I'd recommend this to. It's certainly not a film for nihilists or for those who think of physical life as all there is (not that it's got strong religious themes; the afterlife in Big Fish is metaphorical, not spiritual). Perhaps it's best for those who enjoy mythology and find the "little tradition" of history fascinating. It's a nice, strong, well-acted look at where the myths come from that we, know it or not, live with every day.
An excellent film, and I think one that will be looked upon in the future as being of the calibre of movies like The Wizard of Oz and Willy Wonka.