Not Just the Facts, M'am...

Rating: 8/10 (21 June 2017)

"Big Fish" tells a story about a man who tells stories. I think we can do better. It's about an ordinary man telling extraordinary stories, thus being extraordinary by proxy. His name is Edward Bloom, a man who spent most of his life inventing tales about how he met his wife, how he proposed her, how he built his house etc. In fact, all the "who", the "what" and the "why" that cover the chapters of his life seem to drain their inspiration from tall tales and fantasy. It gives a man a certain charm, he's like an old grandfather whose rambling is easily forgiven, but the film presents him from the standpoint of his son Will (Billy Crudup) and he doesn't exactly share this view.
It's understandable because we've only met Edward (Albert Finney) for five minutes and he just told us a nice little story about a giant catfish he caught with his wedding ring, but the son heard it a thousands times, so much he can recite it, even tell it better than him. Will has had enough and can't stand the fact that his father would steal his thunder, the very day of his wedding, and to babble the same old story, over and over again. There starts a shift of three years, until he learns that Edward's at the verge of death, so he travels from France with his pregnant wife Josephine (Marion Cotillard), convinced that it's time to settle that old record. Will might not be likable but we kind of understand his troubles, it's not about the stories but what they hide.
Maybe Will hates his father's stories like people hated Ed Wood's films but Tim Burton, wizard of imagery and at times, storytelling, can turn any lousy premise into a beautiful and emotional experience. Maybe that's what Edward meant by sugarcoating or reinventing the things of the past. I'll make a chronological leap: near the end of the movie, Will hears the real story about his birth, and it's certainly less colorful and memorable than the way Edward Sr. described. it had the merit to be the truth. Will obviously loves his father but blames him for his incapability to make a distinction between what is true and what is not. Burton doesn't allow us to make the distinction either because the point is elsewhere, the frustration of the son is duly noted, but the trick is to lead him to reconsider his personal frustrations.
The movie, through regular flashbacks, enlightens us about the life and times of Edward Bloom, his younger self, played by Ewan McGregor. The story is obviously exaggerated, we don't really care because within the framework of the film, it's the only story we'll take for granted, especially since Will won't get many real "versions" apart from his birth. The film's premise is a real paradox, we know we don't follow Edward's story but his personal vision, from our perspective, it's "his" story because he's the storyteller.We're basically torn between the anger of the son who only wants to know what kind of a man his father was and our personal enjoyment that doesn't necessarily seek any truth, unless we would care for Will.
Obviously, Roger Ebert cared enough for Will so he was genuinely annoyed by the father and his wrestling with the truth, but Ebert must have been in a wrong day, because the point of the film is obviously to make us relate to Edward and accept our liberty to look at our lives with the narrative we chose. It's Burton's vision as it's Edward's, there are times though where Burton gets carried away by his usual tropes, the colorful suburban small town like in "Edward Scissorhands", the many encounters on which the hero's journey depends, a gentle giant, a circus ringmaster, Siamese twins, a witch, all played by endearing actors like Danny De Vito, Steve Buscemi,and Helena Bonham Carter, but there is something that remains oddly consistent: these lies have a purpose, they represent the way a man looks at his life, he manipulate the facts because he knows these facts will die with him, while stories will contribute to his own myth.
That's the key, that's the purpose of that ending where Will literally says "the hell with it", swallows his pride and 'take' his father to a last farewell ride. The emotionals raised at that moment has something that borrows from Spielberg's movies but it works because it finds the right touch, the son doesn't reinvent a story or make up an adventure from the scratch, he just takes his father to a last trip where he meets and says goodbye to all the people who populated his life and turns into that 'big fish" he always mentioned in that ring story. This is not the son 'understanding' his father, Edward will always be a mystery, but it's the son loving his father enough to at least be part of the last thing that defined him, and maybe understanding him a little.
As a son, and also as a father, I could strongly emotionally relate to the film, because like I say sometimes, it's not about love and respect but understanding. So, on the surface, "Big Fish" is a colorful and visually entertaining picaresque journey of a man who found his destiny the oddest way, who told stories about his life and made it his reason to be, but beneath the surface, it's a poignant father-and-son story where the outcome is two persons finally coming to terms.
The film doesn't overplay the emotions and the visual delights and there's a simplicity in the story you want to fully embrace as if the right attitude was from the wives played by Jessica Lange and Cotillard, let the old fool have his dreams, and be fool enough to enjoy them. Isn't that what Cinema, or life, or everything about, suspension of disbelief.