On a daytrip this weekend, we tuned into NPR (because we're latte-drinking-bleeding-heart-lefty-intellectual-type liberal stereotypes). First, we listened to The Moth, which is a show where people tell stories live in front of an audience. This particular episode featured recordings from "story slams," where regular audience members put their names in a hat to speak. It was pretty mesmerizing to listen to people be brutally eloquent, good humored but unsparing about their own lives.
Following that, an episode of This American Life. This particular episode was about how children arrive at perfectly logical but perfectly wrong conclusions about the world. It started with an anecdote about a little girl who believed her friend's dad was the tooth fairy for years because her friend told her she saw him put the tooth fairy's present under her pillow. (In a terrific touch, her parents left her notes "signed" by her friend's dad with the dollar or whatever the tooth fairy left after she told them the tooth fairy's secret identity.) Next, they discussed a study done by researchers where a child is told to pretend there was either a puppy or a monster in an empty box. After the child acknowledges that there is no puppy or monster in the box, the researcher leaves the room. You can guess what happens: the kids told to imagine a puppy sneak a peek inside the box; the kids told to imagine a monster steer well clear of it.
I couldn't help but think of both of these radio shows while watching our next movie.
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| Mm..frozen time circus popcorn. |
Edward Bloom (Ewan McGregor/Albert Finney), in his own telling, was a giant in a small world. One day, he meets an actual giant, Karl (Matthew McGrory - actually 7'6" tall, which is kind of giant) and together, they head off for bigger and better things. Along the way, or so the story goes, Edward: sees his own death in the eye of a witch (Helena Bonham Carter); visits an ephemerally perfect town with one terrible poet (Steve Buscemi); joins a circus run by a slightly demented Danny DeVito (but when isn't he demented?); courts the girl of his dreams (Alison Lohman/Jessica Lange); goes MIA while in the service (stealing away a pair of singing Siamese twins from behind enemy lines in the process); unwittingly assists in a bank robbery; and loses his wedding ring in a very big fish, causing him to miss the birth of his only son, Will (Billy Crudup). Or so the stories go.
The vast majority of Big Fish's running time is dedicated to this complicated mythology Edward Bloom has built around his own life brick by brick in constant tellings and retellings around the dining room table, at weddings and other social occassions, really any time anyone would listen. But the "true" story of the film takes place in a more mundane world. Edward is old and dying. Will returns home out of duty, though he's tired of Edward and his well-worn yarns. Will, expecting his first child by his new wife (Marion Cotillard - who knew she was in this?), just wants to know the truth about his dad's life before he goes. Edward just wants to keep telling his stories until he can no longer. At the end, they find a way to finally get on the same page.
What could be a corny Hallmark movie turns into something much more interesting in the capable hands of director Tim Burton (side note: 4 out of our first 23 movies are oddly Burton films) and a deep cast. Billy Crudup (where he been at?), particularly, keeps Will sympathetic and relatable, when the role could easily fall into whiny jerk territory. Both McGregor and Finney imbue Edward with undeniable charm (though McGregor's Alabama dialect is more than a little suspect). And Jessica Lange and Helena Bonham Carter are Jessica Lange and Helena Bonham Carter, which is to say very good.
Circling back to the This American Life episode discussed at top, the researchers found that at a certain age (I can't remember, but I think it was 6 or 7), the kids stopped looking in the box or scurrying away from "the monster" when the researchers left the room. The older kids reached a cognitive stage where the imaginary could be separated from the real. They might still imagine that puppy or monster in the box, but they stop wondering if it might really be there.
If Big Fish is about anything, it is about being able to, every now and then, accept those things you know are imaginary as the truth. Especially when what is imagined or embellished, like the stories told on that Moth episode, get at something true that reality simply can't convey on its own. Believe in that puppy or that monster, but you don't always need to look in the box. That's what art does. And maybe that's what our memories and our lives really are.
We both fully expected this to be a serious PITCH IT candidate, but judging by the tears at the end, we need to keep this unabashedly romantic dream of a movie.
Final verdict: KEEPER.
Next Up: THE BIG LEBOWSKI.
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