Big lies great truth

Rating: 8/10 (1 April 2012)

A poetical movie mixing reality and fancy so well and effectively that we cannot say where one ends and the other begins. Albert Finney makes a splendid role as a father telling his son stories of his life where he mixes real facts and events with fanciful narrations full of poetry and romanticism. The story begins when the already adult son is called from France to come near his dying father's bed and begins to revive all those stories that filled his childhood but had ended up by revolting him against what he later began to consider a pack of lies. But now he realizes that he doesn't know his father well and he approaches him willing to know really what and who he is indeed below the top of the iceberg to which he thinks he can compare his father's moral appearance and thus reach the true nature of his personality. It's a very beautiful story in itself and the fancy included in the father's tales are beautiful too both visually and in words. All the performers do an excellent work personifying charming characters. A landmark in the history of recent cinema indeed.