Big Fish
Tim Burton · 2003
Tim Burton’s 2003 fantasy drama Big Fish adapts Daniel Wallace’s novel into a tripartite portrait of a father’s tall tales and his son’s reluctant reckoning with them. Shot in Alabama with Philippe Rousselot’s sun-bleached cinematography and scored by Danny Elfman, it balances Southern Gothic texture with mythic whimsy. Though its tonal shifts and narrative looseness divided critics, its central theme — that stories are how we hold people close after they’re gone — remains its quiet, steady pulse.
