Tall Tales from a Big Fish

Tall Tales from a Big Fish

At first glance, Big Fish is an adventure movie. Edward Bloom (Albert Finney) has lead an unreal life, or so it seems. He has always told his son stories about making friends with a giant, assisting in a bum bank robbery, and catching an uncatchable fish with his wedding ring. But Will (Billy Crudup) has grown weary of the insistent repetition of his father’s stories. He seems to be the only one whom his father can’t charm, and is convinced Edward has never been himself, only putting on a charade in order to make his past sound more exciting than it was.

When he leaves his hometown of Ashton, Alabama, the teenage Edward Bloom (Ewan McGregor) stumbles into the eerie town of Spectre. The camera pans in from a high angle and shows what would be main street, if there was a street at all. The town is covered in lush, green grass, and everyone walks barefoot. When Edward comes back at a later time, the town is dilapidated and has fallen to bankruptcy, so he buys up the town and restores it. The problem is I don’t care that he graciously bought an entire town to save it from collapsing altogether. He did it because he’s a nice guy who helps people because he knows it’s the right thing to do, but I already learned all of that during the expository scenes at the beginning, through the montage of Edward winning high school sports games and saving animals from burning buildings. I got bored with Edward because he keeps doing the same type of good deed. 

Directed in true Tim Burton fashion, flashbacks of Edward’s memories string together the fantastical tales with astonishing cinematography. He has delivered a film that looks just like a fairytale. There’s no question the film looks fantastic and that a lot of hard work came from the special effects department. However, there is question as to the point of such flashy showmanship. The more recent movie, Oz: The Great and Powerful (2013), has the same issue. Vibrant colors and elaborate graphics take your breath away, but what it makes up for in visual achievement lacks in its aid to the plot, and more importantly to the development of the characters. Burton is known for movies with darker themes, such as Sleepy Hollow (1999) or Beetlejuice (1988), and this 2003 film is not excluded from his grandiose sets and overall style. 

Mis en scene, which is anything  put in front of the camera purposefully to show symbolism or a theme, is easy to find in this film. Water is a constant presence in Edward Bloom’s life, from the rain when he was born to the river he laid in when he died. In every scene in the movie, water can be seen on screen. It nears the point that it’s distracting. When he learns where the woman he loves, Sandra (Alison Lohman), goes to college, there’s a river flowing in the background. When Edward and Will have their fight that leads to a three year schism, they’re standing next to a lake. A glass of water is always within arm’s reach of older Edward. Even Sandra herself, including when she’s in her later years (Jessica Lange), has a wardrobe full of blue. 

The symbolism behind the water plays at the idea that Edward could be the big fish. In the beginning of the movie, Edward reads about small goldfish staying small in a small bowl, but getting bigger if it gets into a bigger bowl. From then on, he tries to get from his small bowl of a hometown to the ocean of the world. Edward thinks he’ll go on and do great things. But if that was the case, he wouldn’t need to embellish his life to this extent. I think Edward Bloom failed at becoming a big fish, so he has to lie to others, and even himself, so his life doesn’t seem so miserable in the end. Edward is a shallow character if all he cares about is making sure he appears as an awesome person to others. 

If you watch interviews with the writers, you would know much of the film is based on myths. The purpose of the ancient myths, such as the story of Persephone, is to help people understand a concept that is difficult to grasp. In Persephone’s case, the purpose is to explain why the seasons change. But Big Fish is full of myths that make you think you understand Edward better, but as the credits rolled, I didn’t have a clearer picture of him at all. When Will confronts his father just before he has a stroke, he compares him to an iceberg, as he feels he only sees the surface of Edward, and that he’s hiding the other 90% beneath the water. Edward tries to tell him he’s been nothing but himself since the day he was born. From my perspective, since the day Edward Bloom was born, he’s been trying to be something bigger and better than he actually is. The flashbacks show us that being himself means making up stories that are rich in deceptions and disguised in really pretty sets and costumes.

By the end of the film, father and son have reconciled. Will goes and sees Jenny, (Helena Bonham-Carter) who was supposedly a resident of Spectre, and bluntly asks her if Edward had an affair with her. He had spent so much time away from home while Will was growing up, that this scenario is the most logical explanation. Jenny denies and explains to him that Edward was only helping out around Spectre. The first character in the whole movie to learn something new, Will realizes he needs to accept his dad for who he is, frills and all. This one character, played by a sub-par actor, is stubborn the entire movie, but within five minutes has a change of heart and is able to be a good and caring son. It felt like Billy Crudup had way less screen time than he did, mostly because his character seemed like a placeholder, just a tactic to keep the film moving.

At Edward’s funeral, several of the characters we met in flashbacks are there, in their true form. Karl is just a really tall guy, the Siamese twins are just a normal set of twins, and the ringmaster turns out to just be really hairy and not a werewolf at all. They all stand around and tell stories of the wonderful Edward, but I doubt any of them are surprising or vary in theme. Their stories throughout the movie only had one point to prove: Edward was a great guy because he liked to help people. But a great guy would have more than one quality that set him apart.

John August was the screenwriter for the movie, which he adapted from Daniel Wallace’s novel. It’s impossible to say what genre August was trying to put this movie in. I would give him too much credit if I said it was a cut and dry adventure movie, because the point of an adventure movie is to get somewhere or obtain something. Edward Bloom goes places and obtains a wife, but it doesn’t cost him anything. The journeys and struggles have not phased him as a person at all, and that type of character just isn’t realistic.

The only actor that did an outstanding job was Ewan McGregor. Even though he’s playing such a flat character, he brightens up the role considerably. McGregor doesn’t miss a beat with the writing, and his face is earnest and believable, especially in the scenes with Alison Lohman. Albert Finney is a renowned British actor, but he seems to be sidestepped in this film. Tim Burton uses him as a gateway to get to the storytelling bits in the movie. Finney and McGregor don’t even seem like they’re playing the same person. Older Edward is a little snarky and, quite frankly, annoying. But his younger self is upbeat and charming, eager to help someone out of a jam just because he knows he should. The only similarity between the two is the habit Edward has when he places his thumb on his wife’s chin as a form of endearment. In contrast to McGregor and Finney, Alison Lohman and Jessica Lange had me mesmerized by how well they complimented each other. Sandra, as a character, ages seamlessly. She still has that twinkle in her eye that gives away her spirited temperament.

It won’t do you any good to think too hard on which stories are real and which have been altered, or even which have been made up altogether. Watching Big Fish is frustrating, that’s plain as day. You try so hard to make sense of Edward Bloom, to find the logic in the madness, but in the end all you’re left with is a headache. The point of the movie is to know Edward is a good guy through his retelling of fables, but that point is made early on in the film. The rest of it is pure visual entertainment that is trying to come off as having deep symbolic meaning about the characters.

Connecting the World, One Friend at a Time

Connecting the World, One Friend at a Time

Dorm Room Revelations

Harvard University, one of the most prestigious universities in the world, has hundreds of acres of campus and nearly 20,000 enrolled students. In 2003, a website went up for Harvard students called Course Match, which would could be used to find classes based on other people who were taking them. This was only a small dose of what would come to the Crimson Campus the following semester. Next there was the Facemash site, where the page would display pictures of two people on campus and you were able to decide which one was “hotter”. This caused one of the network servers to crash due to so many users online at once, which also led to it being forced to be shut down. 

Mark Zuckerberg was a sophomore when he launched Facemash. A large reason it met so much criticism was that the students whose pictures were being voted on were never asked permission to use their photos. The Crimson, Harvard’s school newspaper, reported, “Much of the trouble surrounding the Facemash could have been eliminated if only the site had limited itself to students who voluntarily uploaded their own photos.” The idea of a website where the users themselves decided on what was made available to everyone else on the internet was where Zuckerberg saw as an opportunity. In 2004, the website became a reality. Thefacebook.com went live on February 4th.

Plenty of other students attending Harvard were gifted in the tech world, most of them even starting their own websites as well. But Mark Zuckerberg had a drive. He could see the potential in an idea and he ran with it until it materialized. He often had his personal white board filled with equations and functions. Zuckerberg had a vision for a better way of connecting students, and  he wanted it to be the best he could make it.

In its beginnings, the site was open to only a select few. It started out intending to only be available to Harvard University. To make an account, you were required to have an email address with the school, which meant any student, faculty member, or alumni could create one, although the majority of users were students. Thefacebook was also different than other up and coming social websites from that era because it wasn’t advertised as a dating website. The point was to get connected with friends and stay in touch with them.

A Work of Fiction

In 2010, the movie The Social Network was released to theaters. The film, based on The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich, followed the story of how Mark Zuckerberg supposedly stole the idea for Facebook from the Winklevoss twins and also ended up getting sued by his best friend, Eduardo Saverin. Jesse Eisenberg’s portrayal of Zuckerberg is that of arrogance and narcissism. Zuckerberg on-screen was snotty, antisocial, and rude. The movie grossly distorts the actual events surrounding what happened in 2004, and focuses on the less important details such as the cases, which were eventually settled out of court, rather than the bigger picture. Yes, there were lawsuits and such, but the accusations that Zuckerberg stole from the three other students working on a similar project was blown out of proportion. The movie made it seem as if the case was cut and dry, and that Zuckerberg got the idea for Facebook from the other students when the Winklevoss twins asked him to help them start up a website for Harvard students. In reality, he had already been thinking about a social network site by the time they had approached him.

When asked about what he thought of the film, Zuckerberg wasn’t thrilled with the depiction of himself or the impression of the events, “I just wished that nobody made a movie of me while I was still alive.” The film went on to win several Oscars, which were well-deserved for its writing, directing, and score, but just because it was a quality movie doesn’t mean it was based on facts.

A quality of Zuckerberg’s that jumps on and off screen is his intellect. Preceding his Harvard days, he graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy, where he earned numerous awards in math and physics. You couldn’t help but be impressed by the guy, even if he was direct on most matters, which can make some people uneasy. 

By Popular Demand

Immediately, Thefacebook was a success. In The Facebook Effect by David Kirkpatrick, it’s said that the site had over 6,000 users within the first three weeks. The book, released in 2010, goes more in depth about the first months of Thefacebook, and exposits the story of how quickly this idea took off. The more popularity the site gained, the more schools were added that were able to log in. The process to add schools was tedious, based on the school’s actual “facebook” that was their online directory of students. Thefacebook also let you see who was taking what courses and what dorm they lived in, so that information was also needed. What would later become known as status updates were largely influenced by AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) away messages. You could write a short snippet about what you were doing so your friends could see it.

As Thefacebook was spreading like wildfire, Zuckerberg and crew were constantly needing to adapt to the increasing demand. During the summer of 2004, Zuckerberg, and several of his classmates working on Thefacebook, moved out to Palo Alto, California and rented a house to set up shop for the website. The boys continued to expand to other colleges, and concurrently expanded their server count. Every time they bought a new server, Zuckerberg made sure there was space for ten times the amount of users they had at the moment, which didn’t come cheaply. In order to help slow down the foot traffic that clogged the servers, Zuckerberg and company decided to space out when a new university was added to the site. They figured out that the number of users leveled off after a certain amount of time a new college got included. They simply could not keep up with the demand for the new networking site.

There was never a question of if Zuckerberg was the leader. He knew what he wanted, and he would sometimes have “lockdowns” when the crew worked on something until the problem was fixed, which could go well into the night. Zuckerberg oversaw all that went on for Thefacebook. In The Facebook Effect, Kirkpatrick describes Zuckerberg as, “firmly and undisputedly in charge.” That first summer in Palo Alto was critical in Thefacebook’s success, and Zuckerberg was determined to press onward and get things done. 

Sean Parker, originally starting out big in Napster, a music sharing website that met its demise, also saw the leadership potential in Zuckerberg. He thought the head of a company was someone who needed to be able to think on their feet in case a problem arose. Quoted in Kirkpatrick’s book, “If this happens we go this way, but if it winds up like that, then we go this other way. Mark does that instinctively.” Zuckerberg could roll with the punches, and in the end, the product would still be great. 

Never Satisfied

Parker also knew that what kept Thefacebook thriving was that Zuckerberg never took it for granted. “He liked the idea of Thefacebook, and he was willing to pursue it doggedly, tenaciously, to the end. But like the best empire builders, he was both very determined and very skeptical.” Zuckerberg wasn’t the kind of person to stay content with what he had. He knew that the website needed to continue to change and evolve if he wanted it to stay successful. 

A year and a half after it launched, Thefacebook had turned into a real company and had its name officially changed to Facebook on September 20th, 2005. From Kirkpatrick’s book, it’s reported that 85 percent of college students in America had accounts on the site. The next step, Zuckerberg thought, would be to widen the horizon of Facebook’s availability. A separate site was initiated just for high school students, but soon after, Zuckerberg wanted the two to combine. There were new freshman in college that still had friends in high school, but they could no longer keep in touch through the website. The point of Facebook, as Zuckerberg had always thought, was to link people to one another, no matter the demographic. So the line between the two groups was erased, and high school and college kids were now able to become friends online.

Through the use of ads on Facebook, the company was making about $1 million in revenue each month, but that was half a million dollars shy of what it took to keep the website going. Although some might be a little on edge about the prospect of losing $6 million a year, Zuckerberg was not. He honestly did not care about making money. He wanted his site to run, run properly, and make the users happy. If all that made him some cash, so be it. But it was never the focal point of the Facebook to rake in the revenue. 

In the same year, Facebook added the feature of uploading photos. Up until then, the only picture that was a part of your profile was your actual profile picture. Now you could have as many on your page as you wanted, and you could tag other users as well. Zuckerberg was hesitant to add this element, because he didn’t want to complicate the website too much. But this tool allowed for another way to be able to communicate with your friends. A Facebook designer, Aaron Sittig, realized the potential of the ability to put up ordinary photos on the site. If you were to get on MySpace around the same time, those users tended to put up the best of the best pictures, but on Facebook how the photos turned out wasn’t what mattered. “We learned people were sharing these photos to basically say, ‘I consider these people part of my life, and I want to show everyone I’m close to them,’” Sittig says in The Facebook Effect. Zuckerberg’s hesitation was put at ease as the photo feature became the most popular feature of Facebook. 

 A Private Matter

One of the most disputed issues of Facebook is its privacy controls. There are plenty of ways to make sure those who aren’t your friend cannot see what you are posting, but other than that, things can get sticky. Kirkpatrick highlights several incidents in which someone says they are going to be in one place, but later found to be lying because something was posted on Facebook, usually a photo they were tagged in. The social media site has let people’s true colors shine through, allowing everyone else to be involved in their personal life. Significant others can snoop through pictures and status updates, trying to pin an account of mistrust on the other person. Employers will reject potential candidates if they find “provocative or inappropriate photographs or information,” says Kirkpatrick. 

Facebook makes it clear that it’s impossible to keep everything you want private confidential. The privacy policy reads, “We cannot and do not guarantee that User Content you post on the Site will not be viewed by unauthorized persons.” This site was using people’s real names, so the likelihood you would end up embarrassed because someone found a photo you were tagged in is much higher than sites that use pseudonyms. 

Not even half a decade after Facebook began, it was taking over the world. By the end of 2008, the site could be translated into 35 different languages. Kirkpatrick reasons that the explosion of the need to expand this aspect was due to “70 percent of Facebook’s then 145 million active users were already outside of the United States.” Mark Zuckerberg had done it. He had effectively connected people on a global scale. 

Birthday Wishes

Facebook celebrated turning 10 only weeks ago, and the social network is heading in a direction with no end in sight. The number of active users, according to statisticbrain.com, is staggering at over 1 billion. Mark Zuckerberg himself has nearly 25 million followers. In September 2013, the 29 year old posted a photo of a world map coated in blue and streams of light that went from country to country. Each band of light represented all of the different friendships people have made through Facebook. The image was similar to one posted three years earlier, except the newer one was remarkably brighter. The coasts of Africa and South America are noticeably more abundant, as well as all of India, although the area where China would be is almost completely dark due to the blockage of Facebook, among other social media sites, in that country.

On the day of the site’s anniversary, Zuckerberg wrote a long post on his wall, stating how grateful he was to have made it this far, but mostly he was excited to see where Facebook would go in the next 10 years, “In the next decade, technology will enable us to create many more ways to capture and communicate new kinds of experiences.” Zuckerberg has always been about pressing forward, and he has always wanted to help not only Facebook, but the internet in general grow and connect the world. His post, receiving more than a million likes and 100,000 shares, embodies his dream since the beginning. Zuckerberg knows that today only a fraction of people in the world can access the internet. He is making it our responsibility, as well as his, to join the remaining part of the population to what we can so easily take for granted.