The Necessary And Unnecessary Use Of Truth In The Film Big Fish
The film Big Fish by Tim Burton is movie about a man named Edward Bloom who has great gift for telling stories, many of which he tells to his son Will. As Will grows older, he begins to grow a distaste and resentment towards his father’s stories because he thinks they are full of lies. Big Fish explores the necessary and unnecessary use of truth using the relationships between character and the art of storytelling along with trust.
One way the film explores the necessary and unnecessary use of truth is using the relationships that characters have between each other, in particular Edward and his son Will. During the movie Will confronts his father about his stories and they have an argument, "I've told you a thousand facts, Will, that's what I do. I tell stories, ” Edward tells his son, but Will responds with “You tell lies, Dad”. Right from the start, it’s easy to see that Edward and Will don't have a good relation between father and son. Not only that, the reason they have a strained relationship is because of the lack of trust. Will only wants to know the truth, he believes everything he has been told since he was young boy were lies and completely made up. Yet later in the movie we find out that Edward told these stories to his son because he didn’t want to be seen as boring. At first it seemed like it worked, a young Will enjoy these fantastical stories but as he got older he started to see separate fiction from reality and question the truthfulness of it all.
A second way the film explores necessary and unnecessary use of truth is using the art of storytelling. During the movie, Edward is recounting the money he first saw his wife Sandra. He was at the circus and explains that “when you see your true love; time stops”. It was here when the line between fiction and real life was crossed. Edward is seen walking through a crowd of people frozen in time, he even goes through a hula hoop united and pushes popcorn standing still in the air away from him as he approaches the woman he is in love with. However, when he gets near her, time studley speeds up leaving him alone and seeing her walk away without ever talking to her, as if he only saw a glimpse of her. Here, the truth of what happened in this is left to the viewer's own interpretation. Not only that, it shows just how fictional Edward's stories seem, the lack of truthfulness in them is overwhelming. Yet the lack of truth is what makes Edward’s stories amazing, giving him an identify as a storyteller.
One last way the film explores the necessary and unnecessary use of truth using trust. The film makes the viewer question everything they see, because they are viewing Edward’s stories as he tells them to his son Will. Any viewer would assume that stories about giants, witches, werewolves, or a big mysthemical fish are all fictional by the way they are depicted in the film with all the CGI and effects. Like Will, the viewer wants more to know the truth in Edward’s life. These stories must have some truth to them, yet throughout the movie the viewer along with Will are filled with doubt. It’s not until the end, when it’s seen that most stories told had some details exageredt just so Will could find his dad interesting.
