Big Fish
Tim Burton's warmest film: a dying father who has always told his life as a series of tall tales — a giant, a witch who shows your death in her eye, a perfect hidden town called Spectre — and the grown son trying to sort truth from myth before it's too late. Ewan McGregor plays the young father in the fables, Albert Finney the old man telling them.
Released in December 2003 (expanding wide in January 2004) and directed by Tim Burton, Big Fish adapts Daniel Wallace's 1998 novel Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions. It cuts between the present — where traveling salesman Edward Bloom (Albert Finney) is dying, estranged from his skeptical son Will (Billy Crudup) — and the fantastical flashbacks of Edward's life, with Ewan McGregor as the young Edward, in a world of giants, a witch, and a hidden idyllic town.
Jessica Lange plays Edward's wife Sandra, and Helena Bonham Carter appears as both a townswoman and the witch. For Burton — coming off gothic and effects-driven films — Big Fish was a notably warm, human work, turning his fantastical imagination toward a father-son reconciliation rather than macabre spectacle.
It grossed $123.2 million worldwide against a $70 million budget, drew generally positive reviews (76% on Rotten Tomatoes), and earned Danny Elfman an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score. It is often cited as one of Burton's most heartfelt films, its tall-tale structure building to an ending about how the stories we tell become the truth of who we were.
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