Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch Big Fish
2003 · Tim Burton · Big Fish on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 4 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Watch the temperature of the light change when Edward starts a story. (light)
Rousselot shoots the hospital and the present cool and plain. The tall tales come in warm, saturated gold: deep greens, yellow daffodils, sunlit small-town streets. The switch happens every time.
Payoff: The color tells you which register you are in, and never tells you which one is true. In the reading: affective colour. The gold stops describing places and soaks up the feeling instead. That is what the reading calls affective colour.
Look at the props Edward offers as proof of his tall tales. (setting)
Burton gives each tale a solid object, a glass eye, a ring, a flower, and lets Edward point at it as evidence.
Payoff: A prop makes a tall tale feel true, which is why Edward keeps one close. In the reading: hyalosign. A prop that stands for more than it shows is what the reading calls a crystal-image.
Watch Ewan McGregor's open face, then Albert Finney's stubborn grin. (performance)
Two actors play Edward and the film never smooths the seam. McGregor makes the boasting guileless. Finney insists on the legend from a sickbed. You are asked to accept them as one man.
Payoff: Accepting the double is the same act as accepting the stories, and the film asks for both early.
Notice the town of Spectre, where the grass lets people go barefoot. (staging)
Gassner built a too-perfect place. Hold onto the first version: the shoes hanging on the wire, the softness underfoot.
Payoff: A place built from a storyteller's memory looks more like a wish than a map.
Listen for Elfman's score in its lyrical mode, not his spooky one. (sound)
The music that usually clanks and cackles in Burton films here swells and sings. It leads you into the tales and thins out at the bedside, doing the same tonal split the light does.
Payoff: The score is the film's emotional spine, telling you when to lean into wonder and when to sit still.
The 4 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch the temperature of the light, and watch what the camera was actually pointed at.