Why can't we just live in the fabulous fiction

Rating: 9/10 (23 April 2005)

The movie is just so lovely that I kept a smile on my face when watching it. The father had build up a fantastic world filled with witch, giant, big fish, circus They are interesting and attractive stories but he told these to everyone including himself all the time, and finally became a legend himself.
It is natural that the father told his son about his "experiences" in the first place, and he kept doing this year after year. It would bring him great pride if he brought his son into his world, but it seemed not. His son, soon found out that all the stories had been told thousands of times, were actually non-existence. This happened when the little boy grew up, old enough to identify illusion from reality. At the son's wedding, he found his father stood in front of all the guests, again telling his story (the one with the big fish). Feeling so embarrassed and angry, he ran out and shouted to his father, blamed him for had never let him know the true version of his life, for ignoring him years after years even kept talking about himself at his singleton's wedding... After that, he hadnever talked to his father for three years.
Stop from here, I'd like to digress a little bit for another similar plot I remember from Peter Pan. When Peter told Wendy something about fairies, he said: "When the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies. ...children know such a lot now, they soon don't believe in fairies, and every time a child says, 'I don't believe in fairies,' there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead." There must be many fairies fell and dead in the dad's stories when the son grew up.
It is not that I was unwilling to grow up, and it is not that I pay specific sympathy to the father. Actually, I totally understand the mood that the son wanted to know about his father. I'm just wondering why people always want to dig up the truth, put the more wonderful and interesting way to explain it aside. Even though most of the time they do know the truth is unimportant and plain, or worse, fellness. As well as the doctor said at the end of the movie: "I like your father's version more." Maybe that's why people like the father. He kinda has an ability to tell things in a different way, a more acceptable way, eliminate all the banalities.
The most impressive story the father talked about ever is the one with The Beast. At the beginning of the movie, we are told that there some fish that cannot be caught. It's not that they are faster or stronger than other fish; they are just touched by something extra. This just seemed ridiculous when first heard, but alone with the movie moved, it gradually turned out that the big fish was actually stand for the father himself. A man, who was unwilling to tie himself down. But after fell in love at first sight with his wife, he convinced that she was the one he would spend the rest of his life with. Finally he took the wedding wing with no hesitate. And after that, no mater where he reached to, no mater who he met, he never stopped.
Here're some sentences the father concluded after telling each story:
Death is the worst thing that ever happened to me.
Kept in a small pool, the goldfish will remain small. With more space, the fish will grow double, triple, or quadruple its size.
Fish looks difference to different people.
They say when you meet your lover in your life, time stops. While they don't say when it starts to move again, it will add extra speed that you cannot catch it.
That night, I discovered that most things you consider evil or wicket are simply lonely and lacking in social niceties.   Ultimately, the son found something that really happened both in his father's stories and his life, and he began to understand his father's behavior. He found it was not that his father has a habit of lying or hiding himself. It was in fact an attitude of life, a special way to express his understanding through life. This is the spirit of his fiction world. So when the son were sitting beside his dying father, and were told to tell how death would be toward his father, he did so. He told a story successfully, both satisfied his father and himself. Good enough to make death no longer seems terrific. It made death like a beginning to another journey, but warmer, as coming home.
The ending is delightful. It was just a scene of the son's little boy telling stories to his pal. It was stories of his grandpa. Stories finally continue, and the spirit of telling them may passed on from one generation to another.
Have you ever heard a joke so many times you've forgotten why it funny? And then you hear it again and suddenly it's new. You remember why you loved it in the first place.
Let's give everything a chance to show its charm again, and give you a chance to find out that everything around you is actually shinning all the way.