Review Rant: Big Fish
The thing is … there is something special about stories. Whether they are true or not, they contain a thought, an idea. They can entertain or bore. They can stretch the mind. Tall or short, true or not, there is truth. Whether it’s the story or not, the teller says something.
Big Fish is a story about stories. Larger than life stories that stretch your mind and expand your vision of truth. It tells it in such a way that what is true, becomes unreal. You question reality and truth. It tells of a story that is larger than life but you learn it’s not that large. It is a good thinking movie. But more importantly, there were the Christian aspects of it.
There were many good lines in the movie. It talks about goals and desires. It emphasizes hard work and dedication. In the beginning of the movie, the father is confronted with the option of knowing his death. If he sees how he dies, he will become fearful of his death. If he knows how he dies, he will become unafraid of all else. Profound thinking. Is this how we live our Christian life? We know where we’re going to end up. We know that what’s after this is better. There is something better coming. Are we afraid of getting there? Are we afraid of the bumps and bruises we may endure on the road to what is better? If you know how you’re going to die, would you be be afriad of anything else? You’d be invincible until then. I am invisible until the will of God is done in my life.
A goldfish can never become a become a big fish in a small environment. It needs a big place to become that big fish. The Big Fish needs the opportunity to rise up. It cannot become big while staying in a small place. This is so true for people. If we never push ourselves, we will never achieve. If we never stretch ourselves, we will never see how far we can reach. If we limit our experience, we can never become big. “If we allude hardship, greatness will allude us.” Combine these two view points and you have the recipe for an unbelievable life. You can try anything without fear. Expand your horizons. Know no limit. Live without fear.
Tell a story so much, it becomes real. It becomes who you are. You become the story. That was the leaving point of Big Fish. Maybe there was no truth to the story. Maybe there was. Maybe the Big Fish comes from a relativist, you can think up the truth. Imagine you’re walking down a road and you meet a stranger. You beginning talking and this stranger tells you all these riduculous unbelievable stories. Stories of people coming back to life, uncurable diseases being instantly healed, lame people walking, blind people seeing with a touch of the hand. Incredible, such things can’t happen. What happened if the stranger told you he himself was dead and had come back to life? Ridiculous. Absurd. There couldn’t be an ounce of truth. What if he ate dinner with you and then he vanished. Poof. Gone. Then what? Would you believe the rest of the stories? If the food you fed him had disappeared, you had shook his hand, you heard his voice, saw his form, smelled his presence, would you deny his existence? Would that give credibility to his story? Tell a story so much, it becomes real. It becomes who you are. You become the story. But keep the story fresh and it’s awe inspiring. Keep the story new and it’s exciting. Don’t let the story become old hat, then it loses it’s flavor. It loses the reality.