Big Fish is a film that was made in 2003 by director Tim Burton with the screenplay by John August. The film is based on the novel by Daniel Wallace. This film tells the story of an old Edward Bloom (Albert Finney) who is on his deathbed, and his outrageous and mostly unbelievable adventures prior to his one and only son Will Bloom ( played by Billy Crudup) being born. Will Bloom is tired of these long drawn out hyperbolic tales he has heard all his life and wants some truthful answers before his father dies. Big Fish follows Edward Bloom’s life, showed from his point of view on his journey through life. The primary conflict in Big Fish is between an old Edward Bloom and his son Will Bloom. Will is tired of his father’s fairy-tale like stories …show more content…
It can be perceived as a simple story but it also contains great depth when you really look into it. “Commentary about greed of man, our self-importance, and our tendency to overreact, over think, and over complicate our lives run throughout the film like threads binding this quilt of tall tales together” (Cinemaspin.com). At one point young Bloom very well may have stumbled upon what could be perceived as heaven. After young Bloom leaves his hometown of Ashton Alabama with his new friend Karl the giant (played by Matthew McGrory) to start his journey to see the world, he comes across a haunted trail. At the end of this haunted trail is the town of Spectre. Spectre has streets paved with grass and is full of very kind people who quite like Bloom. After staying in Spectre for a short time, Bloom leaves to continue his journey and meet back up with Karl the giant. John Daily described Big Fish as a pop-up book for adults that can take us on a journey into the child in us all (Cinemaspin.com). Bloom had a variety of interesting tales such as the time he caught a catfish as big as a shark, the time he parachuted onto a talent show stage in China while he was in the military, and the moment when he first saw a glimpse of his future wife Sandra (played by Jessica Lange). “There is a point at which his stories stop working as entertainment and segue into sadism” ( RogerEbert.com).
Blackfish is a well-known film about how whales were kept in captivity while being mistreated. This film explained the situation in more of a sequential order stating each event one after another from occurrence. This film was made to inform people of all the cruel and monstrous things that Sea Land and Sea World were doing to the whales.
He teaches the kid what to do in order to successfully reel in a large, beautiful fish. Ironically, the narrator is the one who learns from the kid in the end. At the beginning of the story, everything is described negatively, from the description of the kid as a “lumpy little guy with baggy shorts” to his “stupid-looking ’50s-style wrap-around sunglasses” and “beat-up rod”(152). Through his encounter with the boy, the narrator is able to see life in a different way, most notable from how he describes the caught tarpon as heavy, silvery white, and how it also has beautiful red fins (154). Through the course of the story, the narrator’s pessimistic attitude changes to an optimistic one, and this change reveals how inspiring this exchange between two strangers is. This story as a whole reveals that learning also revolves around interactions between other people, not only between people and their natural surroundings and
Northrop Frye is the author of The Educated Imagination. The book talks about literature and methods that improve and enthralls the reader from common fallacies, to how an author can manipulate what is put in the text. These lesson can be put to use outside in the real world such as advertising. These can also be connected to other media pieces such as other books and movies. The movie Big Fish directed by Tim Burton is one of those media pieces that can be connected to Northrop Frye work. The movie is about a son who trying to learn more about his dying father by listening to stories and myths about his life. The purpose of this reflection is to show that in the educated imagination the chapter
uncovers the truth about the fish, and how it and its environment was abused by the old
Blackfish is a 2013 documentary attempting to elevate public awareness regarding the orca that are being kept in maritime amusement parks, specifically SeaWorld, and the inherent danger of their captivity. The film is effective because it raises a set of important ethical questions for the viewer while presenting with a necessary fact-based style of documentation that does not evoke gratuitous scenes of abuse in order to inspire sympathy, unlike some of the other films that are intended to raise awareness about animal abuse. The film focuses on one orca, commonly referred to as a killer whale, in particular by the name of Tilikum. The documentary begins as a group of contract fishermen hunt a family of killer whales off the coast of Iceland.
The book has vivid imagery making the reader imaging as if her or she was their right beside him in his whole investigation. Such as “In the winter of 1978, through, a fierce blizzard hit southern Connecticut. Temperatures were often below zero and at one point it snowed for thirty-three hours straight. Perhaps it was the cold that killed the fish, or the copper sulfate I helped the caretaker drag through the pond the previous summer to manage the algal blooms, or maybe even the fishermen id noticed trespassing on the estate one day, scoping out my grounds. But whatever caused it, after that never again did I spot a living fish in that pond again.”(Greenberg 12-13). This quote shows how good his imagery, tone, and diction is, when I read it all I could think of is that storm and the pond. The author has an excellent writing style and keeps the reader wanting more. Even though the book has a lot of good things for it the only thing I would tell the author would to give more connections of him to the story. It says “The transformation of salmon and sea bass from kingly and holiday wild fish into everyday farmed variants is a trend that continues with different animals around the globe.”(Greenberg 195). In every chapter about each of the fish it gives some connections to him but it would make it even
In Daniel Wallace’s novel, Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions and Tim Burton’s film, Big Fish, the relationship between the dying protagonist, Edward Bloom and his estranged son, William Bloom, is centrally to the story in both the novel and film. Like many fathers in today's society, Edward Bloom wishes to leave his son with something to remember him by after he is dead. It is for this reason the many adventures of Edward Bloom are deeply interwoven into the core of all the various stories Edward tells to mystify his son with as a child. Despite the many issues father and son have in their tense relationship as adults, Daniel Wallace and Tim Burton’s adaptation of Wallace’s novel focalizes on the strained relationship between Edward Bloom and William Bloom. In both Wallace’s novel and Burton’s film, they effectively portray how the relationship between Edward Bloom and William Bloom is filled with bitter resentment and indifference towards each other. Only with William’s attempt to finally reconcile with his dying father and navigating through his father fantastical fables does those established feelings of apathy and dislike begin to wane. With Burton’s craftily brilliant reconstruction of Wallace’s story does the stories of Edward Bloom and his son blossom onto screen.
The movie recounts how Frankenstein achieves his goal by creating a life- the monster and is unhappy about the outcome. Then, the boat captain, after listening to Dr Frankenstein’s story, changes his mind about his quest and goes home. Overall, the knowledge and power they seek pushes the parallel characters further into a realm of unhappiness, loneliness and
In the novel Big Fish by Daniel Wallace, we are told the story of Edward Bloom, a man of many adventures, who is somewhat of a myth. Big Fish is a collection of the tall tales Edward tells his son about his life, and also of the effect his tales had on his son. The novel comes from an American author from Alabama, while the movie comes from Hollywood and is directed by Tim Burton, who is also American. This story is not an ancient sacred text, so the story’s function(s) is to entertain and to make money.
In the movie, the ideal marriage of Gavin and Babs begins to come apart, when Gavin cannot deal with the loss of the glory he had in his youth.
Consider other parallels: heroes Leopold Bloom and Lester Burnham (same initials, LB) are both middle-aged, middle-class, mediocre, unappreciated admen (Lester describes himself as "a whore for the advertising industry"[49], neither of whom has had sex with their wives in years . Ultimately both Bloom and Lester yearn to regain the past unity and warmth of their homes.
Diving into the book I found that Paul Greenberg takes his readers on a journey starting from when he was just a boy and enjoyed the simple act of casting a baited-line into the water and waiting for a fish to latch onto the hook. “By the summer of 1981, I had a boat...and several thousand square miles of sea for my own use.” (3) After being hooked by Greenberg’s opening story, I learned that the four fish from the title of the book are salmon, sea bass, cod, and tuna. These four fish are on almost every seafood restaurant's menu. The book only has about six traditional chapters but four of them are dedicated to a single fish from the list mentioned before. Regardless, the book is still over two hundred pages long because Greenberg goes so in-depth with the story of each fish.
A fish is a creature that preceded the creation of man on this planet. Therefore, Bishop supplies the reader with a subject that is essentially constant and eternal, like life itself. In further examination of this idea the narrator is, in relation to the fish, very young, which helps introduce the theme of deceptive appearances in conjunction with age by building off the notion that youth is ignorant and quick to judge. Bishop's initial description of the fish is meant to further develop this theme by presenting the reader with a fish that is "battered," "venerable," and "homely." Bishop compares the fish to "ancient wallpaper.
One might say we are presented with two fish stories in looking at Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea and Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, a marlin in the former and a whale in the latter. However, both of these animals are symbolic of the struggle their hunters face to find dignity and meaning in the face of a nihilistic universe in Hemingway and a fatalistic one in Melville. While both men will be unable to conquer the forces of the universe against them, neither will either man be conquered by them because of their refusal to yield to these insurmountable forces. However, Santiago gains a measure of peace and understanding about existence from his struggles, while Ahab leaves the world as he found it without any greater insight.
...nizes the fish because, just like the fish, people fight daily battles to survive in life. This humanization of the fish enables the speaker to relate and respect him, and therefore, ultimately leads to his release.