Big fish - 2003

At first I thought it was a bit silly and boring, but towards the end I was enjoying the story and I just loved the ending, which is awkward, but to explain why I must explain the movie. Old Edward Bloom (Albert Finney) is a great storyteller, people love him, and his wife Sandra (Jessica Lange, absolutely beautiful) simply adores him. His son Billy did too when he was young, but then he grow up hearing again and again and again the same stories, so big and extraordinary and impossible and absurd, and he can't stand them anymore, specially the old story of how he caught a big big fish on the day Billy was born using his gold wedding ring as bait, ring that the fish gave back before running away to freedom. After a few angry words, father and son stop any contact, but fate will bring them together again when Ed gets ill and Billy comes back home with his wife Josephine (Marion Cotillard). I think Ed has cancer, something bad like this, and his family knows he hasn't got much to live. It's not that Billy doesn't love his father , not at all, but he feels like they are two strangers, he feels like he doesn't know who his father really is. Once he says to Ed that he believed all his stories when he was a little kid, but then growing up he realized how impossible they were and realized they were not true, so he feels like he doesn't know his father at all, who his father is behind all his stories, but Ed simply replies that he's been himself all his life and if Billy can't see it that's his own failing. Josephine spends some time with Ed in his room asking for parts of his story life he doesn't yet know, like how and when he knew Sandra. Ed tells her all his story: when he was a child and for a dare he ventured into an old witch's house: legends says that looking into her glass eye one could see one's own death. After some consideration, he decided that to know when he was going to die could be useful to him so he looked at it and saw it, but never told anyone what he saw. He wanted to do great things so in his small town he was a great baseball player, basketball player, football player, he could do it all apparently. When a giant started killing animals he offered to go talk to him to send him out of town. He was always confident that nothing too bad could happen to him because he had seen his death and knew it wasn't time, so he talked to the giant (real giant, tall as a house) and convinced him to go away together. On his way he discovered the mysterious city of Spectre, where there are no roads and people are comfortable walking around barefoot after an eight-years-old girl took away their shoes and throw them up onto a rope hanging at the town entrance. I didn't understand why they told him he was early, but Ed always loved to put mystery and fantasy and fascinating details into his stories. Ed and the giant Karl watch a circus show, and Karl is hired on the spot. Ed sees the girl he's sure he's going to marry, but she goes away before he has a chance to talk to her. The circus ringmaster Amos (Danny DeVito) says he knows her, so they make a deal: Ed will work there for free and each month Amos will tell him something about the girl. Three years go by: Ed keeps working, dreaming about her, and receiving information each month like: what her favourite flower is , that she goes to college, that she likes music... Ed is satisfied with the deal, but now he wants more so he goes to Amos at night and discovers a big wolf inside his trailer. The wolf attacks him but Ed stops a circus man from killing the animal, and in the morning he finds out it was Amos himself, a werewolf. Thankful, Amos tells him where he can find the girl he loves: Sandra Templeton. Ed leaves immediately only to learn that she's engaged to someone else. Ed however is so sure he's going to marry her that doesn't give up and starts courting her in any way until she accepts. They get married but the war calls him away. Ed never feared for his life because again he knew he was not going to die now, so he did all kind of dangerous missions. His last one was to infiltrate and steal important documents. He did that, but then asked for help to get out of there. Siamese-singer-girls helped him after he promised them he could get them a job in entertainment in America. Still it took him a long time to get back home, and he was declared dead, missing in action. He finally came back though, and found a job as travelling salesman, or something like that, although I didn't understand what it was, that metal hand. He met again his hometown's most famous poet (whom he had met in Spectre), and Winslow (Steve Buscemi) is there to rob the bank, and Ed sort of helps him. Once out of there Ed explained to him why there were no money in the bank so Winslow decided to go to Wall Street, where the real money is. Winslow became a millionnaire and sent ten thousand dollars to Ed as a thankyou, so Ed could buy his wife the house they both dreamed about.
Billy hears these stories, but believes none of it. One day he finds the name Jennifer Hill among his father's documents, and goes to meet her. He always though his father had a secret life, but found out that it wasn't how he thought. Ed never cheated on Sandra. Jennifer (Helena Bonham-Carter) is that eight-years-old girl now all grown up. When the town of Spectre was becoming a ghost town, Ed decided to save it. He bought the town, and with the help of his friends with money, he rebuilt it, restored it to new life. Jennifer didn't want to sell, so he stayed there and  personally worked on the house. Jennifer fell in love with him, but Ed only loved Sandra. Billy learned this last part of the story from Jennifer. When he goes back he finds his family is in the hospital after his dad had a stroke. Billy waits by his bedside the whole time. When Ed wakes up, knowing these are his last moments, he asks Billy to tell him a story, the story of the witch and of how he was going to die, so Billy told him a story, a fantastic, absurd, surreal one in which the two of them run away while Sandra stalls the hospital staff, and they drive to the river, and everybody Ed had ever known was there to salute him, and Billy brought him into the river where Ed turned into the big big fish of his story. I loved this bit, when Billy started telling his story, making it up to please him, it was like a confession of love. It felt like he was in a hurry to come up with a great fantastic lie as long as his father could still hear it, and it also felt like father and son were not so different after all.
At the funeral, finally Billy understands the truth. All the characters of Ed's stories come to pay their condolences for an old friend. Billy thought they never existed, but they are all here, all real, although obviously not so 'fantastic' as in Ed's stories. I mean, Amos is not a werewolf, Karl is a giant but certainly not house-tall, the korean sisters are twins, but not siamese, stuff like that. Ed always loved to enrich his stories, but this didn't mean they were complete lies.
Now you see what I meant with awkward. I loved the bit when Ed died, basically. It's weird, but it's true. When Billy tells his story and the funeral where we realize it was all true, and that Ed simply added a bit of colour to his stories to make them better: he had really been his true self all those years of story-telling. That was his true self, the one that dreamed big, and felt and fantasized big.
As a young man Ed's character is played by Ewan McGregor.

In Italy it was: Big fish-le storie di una vita incredibile