Critiques américaine de Big Fish

Rolling Stone :  31/2 /4

"Director Tim Burton finally hooks the one that got away: a script that challenges and deepens his visionary talent. Big Fish, skillfully adapted by John August (Go) from the 1998 novel by Daniel Wallace, brims with storytelling sorcery, and Burton makes it glitter. This marvel of a movie lives up to its buzz as an Oscar contender by finding a provocative subtext for Burton's flair for fables. Who better than the whiz behind Ed Wood and Edward Scissorhands, not to mention Batman and Beetlejuice, to spin the tale of a man who makes up his life as he goes along, a man who finds a deeper truth in fantasy.
That man is Edward Bloom, a salesman played with comic bravado by Albert Finney in a touching, towering performance made all the more extraordinary because almost all of his scenes are in bed. Edward is dying. His wife, Sandra (Jessica Lange), has called their son, Will (a sharply implosive Billy Crudup), home to Ashton, Alabama, to reconcile with the father he hasn't spoken to for years. Will, a journalist who has made his career by serving facts straight, hates his father for constructing myths to hide behind.

It's the myths, of course, that most reveal the real Edward. And Burton wisely builds his movie around them. Ewan McGregor, freed from his Star Wars straitjacket, steps in to play the young Edward, and the tall tales begin. McGregor, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Finney in his Tom Jones days, is wonderfully engaging. Finding Ashton too small a pond for the big fish he longs to be, Edward sets out for a wider world, where he meets a witch, a giant, a naked babe who saves him from drowning and the freaks in a circus run by a ringmaster (Danny DeVito) who's part werewolf. A stop in Spectre, a shadow version of Ashton populated by happy, barefoot failures such as poet Norther Winslow (the great Steve Buscemi), almost traps Edward in complacency. But soon he's off, courting Sandra (lovely Alison Lohman) in college; parachuting into Korea, where he discovers a conjoined-sister singing act; saving a bankrupt town; and meeting a stranger (a striking Helena Bonham Carter) who may not be a stranger at all. All the actors are exceptional, searching their characters for the hurt that needs healing. Lange pierces the heart as Sandra climbs in the tub with Edward to offer comfort and forgiveness.

In less capable hands, Big Fish could play like a tribute to a liar's pathology. Or, worse, Edward could be a holy fool, like Forrest Gump. He isn't. In trying to reshape the world around his fantasy, Edward wants to right the world's wrongs, and his own. That he can't is his tragedy. The tension inherent in this fable of a father with his head in the clouds and a son with his feet on the ground brings out a bracing maturity in Burton and gives the film its haunting gravity. As the son learns to talk to his father on the father's terms and still see him clearly, Big Fish takes on the transformative power of art. "

Shadows On The Wall : 4/5

"Tim Burton atones for the disastrous Planet of the Apes 2001 with this lyrical and involving family drama."

Film Threat ****1/2 / *****


"One man was offered the chance to be the next Elvis Presley, but chose to be an accountant instead. Another had an affair with one of the country’s biggest rockstar's girlfriends. Another grabbed her children and hid under the table from a delirious spouse. A youngster boarded himself up in a house fearing his homicidal aunty would come knocking on the door. And another, well, he didn’t catch any fish one day, so he jumped the fence of a trout farm and stole all theirs.

They’re things that have happened in my family - Apparently. Chances are, they’ve been exaggerated to the extreme and one really doesn’t know what to make of it.

Will Bloom (Billy Crudup) has much the same impasse. His father, Ed (Albert Finney) the king of tall tales, is always telling of the extraordinary moments of his life - and, well, Will’s a little sick of it. So sick of it in fact that for three years he doesn’t talk to his old man. When he eventually does come around, Dad’s laid up in bed – dying from cancer. Journalist Will, whose penchant is dealing with the facts, doesn’t want to be hearing any more of Dad’s myths – which include stories about giants he befriended, giant fish and a heroic tour of duty – at least not until he ultimately realizes there might be a lot more truth to the story than he initially believed. Or wanted to believe.

If you’re a fan of Tim Burton, you’ll enjoy “Big Fish”, it’s got all the weird and wonderful elements you’ve come to expect and enjoy about the eccentric directors films and more. If you’re not a fan of Burton, you’re going to like it even more. It takes those oddities and twists that many don’t usually go for if they’re not a big fan of the director and interweaves them into a tale that’s so enriching, so heartwarming, so funny, so touching and so breathtaking, you’ll wonder why the king of wackiness didn’t branch out sooner. The film, adapted by John August from the 1998 novel by Daniel Wallace, blends the off the wall with the wondrously touching so well, that it’s possible Burton was born to helm it. After this, everyone will be somewhat of a fan of the man.

Ewan McGregor – who looks astonishingly like a young Finney in “Tom Jones” – is fantastic as the younger Bloom, whilst Albert Finney is as solid as always as the lively older version. Billy Crudup is equally as authentic and memorable as son, Will, and Jessica Lange, just a delight as Will’s mother and Ed’s long time love. And the supporting cast isn’t too shabby either. Danny De Vito, Alison Lohmann, Steve Buscemi and Helena Bonham Carter don’t have as much to do here as maybe they deserved, but they make the most of their few brief scenes by unearthing some outstanding characters.

The film’s closest cousin might be “Forrest Gump”, and admittedly that’s the easiest film to market this one ("this year’s "Forrest Gump"), but it’s also quite different from the Robert Zemeckis film. This is really the story of a father and son, not a dimwit. But what both films do have in common, is heart, “Gump” had it, and this one’s got it, possibly even more so. This is the tale of a duo that doesn’t really seem to know much about each other, except of course that Dad has some wild yarns. But it could just be those wild yarns that make the man. And inevitably, it does. And in turn, the outcome is an amazing motion picture experience.

“Big Fish” is a very special movie. See it with someone you love; or want to."



Slant Magazine : 4/4

"Critics have already been comparing Tim Burton’s new film Big Fish to Forrest Gump, which is somewhat of a mis-association. American history happens to a passive Tom Hanks in Robert Zemeckis’s endearing but naïve Oscar-winner. In Big Fish, Edward Bloom (Ewan McGregor) happens to the American pastoral. In many ways, comparisons to Denys Arcand’s heinous The Barbarian Invasions are more appropriate. Both films center around a father-son disconnect, but only one truly attempts to understand the rocky relationship between parents and children. More positively, the film also plays out as a magical realist companion to Emir Kusturica’s towering parable Underground, which also challenged the way we watch movies.

McGregor’s sociable Edward Bloom is a big fish in a small town, a Johnny Appleseed who refuses to settle for a life less ordinary. Over the course of the film, an older and ailing Edward (an incredible Albert Finney) spins tall tales for anyone who will listen: how he caught the biggest catfish in the world but how he had to let it go at the risk of losing his wedding ring; how he saved a small town from a hungry giant (Matthew McGrory) and stumbled upon a heaven-ly village after choosing the road less taken (Robert Frost would be proud); how he worked as an indentured servant for a lycanthropic circus master (Danny DeVito) for no pay (only the satisfaction of discovering new tidbits of information about his future wife); and so on.

These stories fail to compel Edward’s son, William (Billy Crudup), and it’s this lack of faith that Burton targets to illuminate our country’s notions of patriotism, pop culture, and spirituality. Though Daniel Wallace’s novel of “mythic proportions” is as American as apple pie (not unlike, say, Pee Wee’s Big Adventure), Burton and screenwriter John August (Go and McG’s two Charlie’s Angels films) ensure the story’s universal appeal. “It’s rude to talk about religion,” says Edward at one point, cheekily pointing to the non-secular nature of the stories he uses to engage the world around him. There’s no mention of God in the film, but there is a god very much alive in Burton’s fantastical set pieces.

Big Fish is a cosmic gallery of Gothic inventions and magical wish fulfillments. Edward may as well be an apostle sitting on top of a mountain, compulsively relating stories about the founding of a man and, much larger, the founding of a nation. What with its many intertwining subplots, his life is a collection of Bible stories that engage our spiritual curiosity, asking us to entertain and cultivate myth over reason. When the young Edward finally wins the young Sandy (Alison Lohman), they stand in a field of yellow daffodils and the war zone where Edward defeated a familiar competitor resembles a crop circle in the shape of a sperm cell. These are the evocative images that perpetuate Edward’s personal and Burton’s aesthetic myth-making.

An older Sandy (Jessica Lange) gets into a bathtub fully clothed with her dying husband. “I don’t think I’ll ever dry out,” she whispers. It’s the most beautiful piece of dialogue you’ll hear in any film this year, because it not only speaks to the power of their love but is indicative of just how saturated Burton’s images are with that love. There’s a suspicion that Edward Bloom may or may not have lived the fabulist life he compulsively speaks of. Whether or not he is telling the truth is beside the film’s “surprise” ending. Big Fish is sentimental but never manipulative, a non-secular tall tale that speaks to our universal desire to live life not necessarily to its fullest, but with wonderment of our very existence. It’s a simple but profound truth. Big Fish is love and death, Burton style. "