William Bloom’s father, Edward, always has told fantastical stories about his life. William travels home to speak with his dying father to try and find out if any of the stories he was told hold any truth to them.
If you have never seen a Tim Burton movie one thing that pops up often in his films is the use of flashbacks! In Big Fish specifically, he uses the flash backs quite a lot to show the stories he had told his son about his life.The flashbacks always run in chronological order and never skip chunks of time, where as during the present time tends to skip around. For example the flashbacks start when Edward was young and follow back to back creating the story of his life. When the film she’s what is supposed to be present day in between flash backs it often has time jumps. One scene William is in his kitchen getting the new that his father is dying and then in the next he is on a plane. One last side note about the flashbacks is that when it switches from present day back to a flashback they all seem to be triggered by something in the present day scenes. One example would be William sees a small boy making shadows on a plane and we are taken back to when his dad make shadow puppets on his bedroom wall.
Another interesting quality you see between the flashbacks and present time is that when there is a flashback the lighting When we see William and Edward in present day the setting often looks normal with natural looking lighting and everything seems to be in focus. With the flashbacks we see that the lighting looks more staged and setting starts to become more unrealistic. All the lighting in the flashbacks are exaggerated. When you see a flashback that has a darker mood the lighting is incredibly dark and gloomy or in contrast when the flashback is a positive we see things much brighter. The lighting in the flashbacks also give the scene a hazy look to them, almost as if their hinting toward the fact that they may not be real. When we see someone important in the flashbacks they become even more bright almost to the point that they look like they are glowing. If we look at the backgrounds in the flashbacks they are also not in focus or they are not well defined.
Now lets looking at the difference in settings. When we see scenes from present day everything looks “normal”. When we look at the settings in the flashbacks we see that there are parts of them that just don’t look realistic. There are scenes where there are small parts that look to be animated and make the rest of the setting seem unnatural. When we see something scary in a flashback there is a lot of ominous fog that randomly appears. Again this could be hinting toward the fact that whatever we are looking at could be fictional. There is a particular scene where we are shown this small town where all of the houses seem similar, all the yards look the same, and they all have men mowing the lawn. All of the symmetry makes it seem like a fake town because in real life you wouldn’t see that.
Last thing to look at is the sound/music in the film. When we are watching scenes that are supposed to be from Edwards life we hear Edward as the narrator but, when we hear present day narration it is in William’s voice. It makes it feel almost as if what Edward is saying is fictional because everything is told in this fantastical way. When William is narrating it sounds normal and everyday life. When we hear a narrators voice it often drowns out all the other noise coming from the scene to draw your attention to the sound rather than the action that is happening in the scene. The music in all of the flashbacks once again make them seem unrealistic or fake. When we see Edward do something heroic or action packed we hear this cartoon hero type music. This also happens when something scary or suspenseful happens its not necessarily scary music it sounds almost cartoon scary.
sources cited:
Barsam, Richard, and Dave Monahan. Looking at movies. 5th ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 2015. Print.
Finney, Albert, and Billy Crudup, Actor. Big Fish . Directed by Tim Burton2003.
Videographer, Utah. “FILM REVIEW | BIG FISH.” Blog. , edited by Utah Videographer, www.nathanpickettfilms.com/blog/film-review/big-fish/. Accessed 19 Jan. 2015.