The story of stories

Rating: 9/10 (25 September 2011)

Big Fish should be filed under 'what could have been'. Having been a big Tim Burton fan in my formative years, having loved Batman and Beetle Juice in my early teens and then growing into Ed Wood later on, my interest was dwindling with Sleepy Hollow and turned into real concern with Planet of the Apes. Out of nowhere came Big Fish - which seemed to signal a complete shift for Burton. He was finally growing up, rebelling against his own predictability and the style that he himself created and single-handedly turned into a cliché. On Big Fish he was reinventing himself and recreating himself as a legitimate filmmaker. Sadly, it remained a completely solitary incident. Burton sunk further back into his own clichés and never once created anything as fresh as Big Fish since.
And so, Big Fish must be considered as a film by its own right, rather than a transitional step in Burton's filmography; and when seen as such, it's revealed as a gorgeous film, a drama/fantasy combination that's considerably more positive and whimsical than comparable films like Heavenly Creatures, The Fall and Pan's Labyrinth, all of which use the fantasy in the darkest ways possible. In Big Fish the fantasy isn't about escaping from horrible reality - it's to enhance a "regular" reality, to make it more interesting and more spectacular. In a way, it's about the very essence of storytelling, and by extension, of filmmaking, which may explain why it's Burton's most emotional and personal movie - since Edward Scissorhands, at least.
Burton's knack for visuals is obviously on display here too, but for once it's not the main attraction. Big Fish is gorgeously shot, the lighting and coloring construct the mood, but this time the characters are the centerpiece - the characters, astonishingly, not the actors (looking at you, Johnny Depp), because not one of the actors actually delivers a shattering performance (Albert Finney is the best one, as well as the only one who makes the fake accent work) but the characters are all remarkably memorable, and the credit should go to the cast but most of all to Burton. It's shocking that he could ever make a movie as emotionally potent as Big Fish, and sad that he never tried to repeat it.
You can completely ignore the fact that Burton directed this; if you hadn't been told, it's possible that you'd never notice. Just sit back and enjoy a beautiful, touching, sad, hilarious, magical story, and be glad that someone talented took the time to make it.