Intermission: 'Big Fish' a keeper for Burton, moviegoers

Jim Wunderle owns Wunderle Sound Services and is a Springfield free-lance writer and musician.

While "Big Fish" is as firmly rooted in tall tales and fantasy as any of director Tim Burton's other films, it's also his most "adult" movie to date. While "Pee Wee's Big Adventure," "Batman," "Edward Scissorhands" and "Ed Wood" all dealt with the fears, foibles and frailty of the human condition, "Big Fish" seems to take a different approach. Even though the individual fantastic tales remind the viewer of those of Baron Mnchausen, the heart of the whole is about ties that bind a family and the relationship between father and son.

Albert Finney is Edward Bloom, an aging man with a grown son, Will (Billy Crudup). Edward was a fairly absent father, on the road as a traveling salesman, and there is an emotional chasm separating the two. Edward is infamous as a storyteller. His most famous tale concerns catching the world's largest catfish using his wedding ring as a lure the day Will was born. Everyone has heard the story a million times, and when Edward insists on telling it at Will's wedding reception, tensions reach a new high between the two.

Soon after, Edward falls ill. Through a series of nonlinear flashbacks, we see Edward's history (as seen through his eyes anyway) and his adventures with the circus, with a witch who let him foresee his own death, in the magical town of Spectre and how he courted the love of his life, Sandra (Jessica Lange). Ewan McGregor, hiding his English accent under an authentic southern drawl, plays the young Edward expertly.

Will tires of the tales and wants his father to own up, just once, to what really went on. Did Edward have another family, another life he led when he left Will and Sandra at home to go on the road? Why must he invent these nonsensical tales that Will believes have worn out their welcome with Edward's audiences?

Things slowly change, and by the end of the film, Will, who is about to become a father himself, has something of an epiphany. The tall tale he tells on Edward's deathbed is as poignant and fantastic as anything Edward has ever concocted. The funeral scene a coda at the end of the film is a real kick.

"Big Fish" is fine entertainment that may bring a tear or two to even those with fairly "normal" families.

House of Sand and Fog'

With "House of Sand and Fog," first-time director Vadim Perelman working from the novel by Andre Dubus III has created a film of quietly immense emotional weight. He's aided greatly by the cinematography of Roger Deakins ("Fargo," "Kundun," "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"), which is rich and intimate.

Jennifer Connelly plays Kathy Nicolo, an emotionally damaged recovering alcoholic. She's living in her childhood home, left to her by her father when he died. Through inattention on her part and a mistake on the part of the county tax collector, the property is put up for sale.

Massoud Behrani (Ben Kingsley) is a former colonel in the army of the Shah of Iran. After fleeing to America in the wake of the Shah's fall from power, Behrani has struggled to make ends meet, doing menial jobs while keeping up the pretense to friends and family of still being well off. Behrani sees the house for sale and buys it for a fraction of its worth. His plan is to sell it, get another place and put back some of the profit for his son's education.

Kathy, still reeling from her struggle with addiction and the fact her husband has recently left, is dazed and confused. She hires a legal aid attorney but soon discovers the only way she can regain her house is if Behrani agrees to sell it back to the county at the price he paid. He, of course, is unwilling to do so.

The main plot of the film involves the physical and emotional struggle between the two flawed main characters.

It wouldn't be right to say "House of Fog and Sand" is "entertaining," but like great literature, there is much value in this story which can be taken as a life lesson on many levels. It's a great film.