Big Fish

I remember seeing Big Fish several years ago, and it was probably one of my favorite films at the time. I think at the time my brother and I were really interested in movies that Ewan McGregor was in just because we enjoyed his acting that much. The story itself had a lot of elements of a sort of Gothic Fantasy set in the southern U.S. state of Alabama. (That must've been another reason why I liked the setting of the movie, because I have a sister that lives in Alabama.) The whole movie is told through a series of short folk-tale stories of the main character Edward Bloom's life as he lies on his deathbed. The story starts off at his son's wedding, where he mentions the story of how he caught an enormous fish using his wedding ring as bait on the day his son was born. His son was so disgusted with him thinking that his father was such a liar that he could never trust him with anything, and worried that he might be the same with his own children someday. The two of them wind up not talking for three years until Edward is on his deathbed. His son and now pregnant wife fly back in to Alabama to be by his bedside and hear all his tall tales. I loved the plot of this movie because it almost reminded me of a Brother's Grimm folktale in the way it used supernatural elements as plot devices to move from one scene to the next. This is definitely one of my favorite genres of storytelling, and if definitely inspires me to make stories of similar elements.