November 13, 2003

I keep intending to do a Matrix Revolutions review, before I get strung up in the courtyard for not doing one, but I need to get a head of steam. Hopefully tomorrow…

Before I cut into Big Fish, a special note for Los Angeles based readers. There is a very special movie at the AFI Film Festival called Chinese Odyssey 2002. This Jeff Lau film is in so many ways the film that Quentin Tarantino aspired to with Kill Bill, Volume One. It is very funny, loaded with action and a constant surprise.

The AFI description is: "In Ming Dynasty China, young Emperor Zheng De and Princess Wushuang long to escape their prison-like existence at the Imperial Palace. When they finally escape with Wushuang disguised as a man and Zheng going incognito they make their way to a small nearby town and both meet the loves of their lives, a lowly born brother and sister. Numerous confusions and complications threaten to keep the pairs of fated lovers apart even the intervention of a goddess might not be enough to make things right."

But it's better than that.

The last show is Friday at 4:30p at The Arclight. If you can get there, you won't regret it. You may even acquire it.

Today's column was late because of the MCN Oscar column (which you can read here).

And now…

There is an interesting phenomenon this year. A number of filmmakers are doing their best work by getting beyond the things that are expected of them. Jim Sheridan's In America is about a man struggling with his demons, but there is a younger feminine energy in this film that wasn't as much in evidence in his previous work. Ron Howard loses the sentimentality and soars with adult emotions in The Missing. Clint Eastwood stays behind the camera, Peter Weir doesn't kill his hero and Anthony Minghella comes to America.

It's also been a very male year. 21 Grams is really a story about men and their internal angst and the women who are dragged across that landscape by them. Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany share an intense relationship, even if it doesn't reach as far as Andy Jones' dream that they are playing Hide The Musket. The three "brothers" of Mystic River are fated to repeat their fates over and over again, supported or not by their women. The Missing may be the feminist movie of the year, as the heroine may need her father to be her male hero, but the film is set in a world where equality of the sexes comes from need, not choice and the women prove to both be women and up to the tasks normally assigned to men.

Tim Burton delivers a movie about a father and a son, about the mirror we each hold to the world and about the only thing that allows true love to live in this world, forgiveness.

The theme permeates the quiet moments of all Burton's work, when you think about it. There is the magical figure, indulged by everyone around him, his status as a fool ending up the engine for truth in the lives that don't appreciate his joy of life. The real Tim Burton version of Planet of the Apes would have to feature a talking human from the future/past who is thought to be a freak by the apes and other humans, not a violent threat.

But in Big Fish, Burton reaches beyond his youthful ideas of the outsider hero. Albert Finney's Edward Bloom is in many ways a small man. He doesn't always do what's right. He doesn't always pay attention. His real life could never match his imagination.

Where Burton shows his maturity here is that he doesn't need to give his heroic lead a pair of sharply misformed hands or a black & white world where he is King Freak or enough make-up to cover a 5 o'clock shadow or a mask and multimillions or a scientific world to hide in before being overwhelmed by the mythological layer of life. Edward Bloom is just a man. Only his stories seem outsized.

As in all fine drama, the great question is not the boundaries that circumstance creates, but the heart and soul of the man (or woman, of course) making the journey. What defines truth other than perception? We are each the hero of our own story. But does that make us truth tellers? Who gets to decide?

No one.

In the end, there is only love. Love is the human fuel that can never quite be comprehended, like God or luck. None of us can live without that fuel. It's not an issue of romantic love versus familial love versus the love of your friends. It is my considered opinion that the most dangerous threat to the human spirit is the inability to appreciate being loved. It is expressed in the cry of the baby, the desperation of teenagers, the pain of divorce, the loneliness of old age. Though we live in a world of intellectual perversions, the desire to know that we are loved is not frivolous… it is as necessary as air.

Big Fish is the story of two men, a father and a son. The son doesn't understand his father's expressions of love and has been building a rage about it for decades. But now, in crisis, he will try to allow his father's love, flawed though it is, to touch him with all the power of his big fish tales.

The great beauty of Burton's film (credit for which must be shared with novelist Daniel Wallace and screenwriter John August) is that both men make truly human choices as they dance this dance. There is no easy answer. There is no cheat. The only thing that changes is perception. The only tool that this father's son has is to grow up a little more and to offer his father the generosity of spirit that so many never get around to until after their parent has passed.

On top of that, there is the magnificent filmmaking that we all know Burton can deliver. Philippe Rousselot's cinematography is breathtaking. The work of production designer Dennis Gassner and his team of Jack Johnson, Richard L. Johnson and Nancy Haigh will never be appreciated quite enough, as Burton will get credit for the vision, but stunning work there. Colleen Atwood did a great job costuming a film that has to wander between truth and magic over and over without ever calling attention to itself.

But in a weird way, Burton's big fish directing is as much of a distraction as Edward Bloom's stories… and as much his reality. Edward Bloom can tell a story of great beauty and vision, even though he loves that big flourish. And Tim Burton can too. It was impossible not to feel Edward Scissorhands' pain and sweetness. He was a freak who had a beautiful soul. Tim Burton pulls off a tougher trick here.

Burton gives us a regular man, albeit with a gift for gab, who has a beautiful soul. He gives us a son who, like so many, has moved on with his life, compartmentalizing his disappointment with his father, but clearly a little incomplete. He gives us a wife who feels the power of her husband's love, no matter how much shadow his ego creates. And he gives us the son's young wife, who loves her man enough to wait for the clouds to pass to get to the sun she knows is there.

We all know a big fish. And each of is is seen as a big fish by someone else, even if we never can see ourselves through those eyes. We see what we choose to see. Who is to say what's right?

It is too early to mark Big Fish as a true masterpiece. That distinction is not something best made quickly, no matter how fine the work. But it is a truly wondrous film of love and renewal. It may take a few looks to see past Tim Burton's big fish tales to see the heart of the film. But it is there. And it beats strong.

READER OF THE DAY: NOT DAREDEVIL'S BROTHER writes : "I was talking to my brother last night, and we were making fun of DVD because of the “super special extended director’s platinum edition” marketing. We couldn’t stop laughing at the feeling of being suckers, that no matter when you walk an edition out of a store, it’s already not the latest edition. Here’s a scenario:

Dad buys Terminator 3 yesterday, but mistakenly in Full Screen.

Brother takes Terminator 3 back the today in exchange for the Wide Screen edition.

On the shelves is Terminator 3, Governator Edition, which came out the day after the “special edition”.

2 months from now Terminator 3 Ultimate Edition comes out, with new footage added directly into the movie.

6 months after that the Terminator Trilogy appears on store selves, with even more new stuff.

It would be different if all editions were released simultaneously and stores carried them, giving customers price choice if the features are worth it. But all editions are not released at the same time, and often retail outlets only carry the latest edition, if the older one is even in print.

Every DVD buyer I know sees this as greed, pure and simple. This trend will start DVD piracy in years to come and cause the same financial problems for the movie industry as the music industry. I have scaled back my DVD buying tremendously because I don’t like buying the same thing more than once if I want to see the director’s vision, or truly how it was made.

I can guarantee people all over the country are starting to think about whether they will buy the original Star Wars trilogy on DVD next September. We have all been done this road before. How many editions are there going to be? When is the whole thing, the whole 6 films going to be called done and there are no more editions? When you make the customer actively have to think about “am I going to get screwed making this purchase?” you as a business are making an enemy. People feel morally justified to steal when they feel like they have been stolen from.

Strangely enough, the one person I have confidence that is not going to release another edition of his movies is Peter Jackson with the Lord of the Rings. His Extended Editions are so massive, I don’t see what more he could possibly do. My “strategy” is that New Line is just going to box up the Extended Editions and sell that, so I can buy the extended editions now and not get ripped off. This is what I am talking about; I have had these “strategy” conversations with many people and everyone wants on demand access to the products they like, but feeling “dirty” about it is going to eventually kill the DVD industry.

The music industry could have got on the DVD bandwagon. The disk was originally named Digital Video Disk, but the consortium renamed it Digital Versatile Disk so they could do things like DVD – Video, DVD – Data, and DVD – Audio. If the music industry latched on to DVD-A and created additional value for customers, sure you could still pirate the songs, but the videos (seems clear that the artists videos should be on the same disk), making of documentary, maybe even some kind of commentary on what the songs mean, could all be in one package.

Of course, they would have done the same thing that the movie industry is doing with editions, so we would have eventually got to the piracy problem anyway."

E ME: Do you know you are a big fish?