Tim Burton’s work Big Fish was definitely one of his better
movies in my opinion. The cross
between darkness and the character of Ed Bloom who was not one of Burton’s
typical characters makes the movie.
Edward is not the usual character that we see in Burton’s movies, but he
is able to connect with the outcast people and use his imagination as he goes
through life.
The first outcast character that we see in the movie is the
giant named Carl. The town wants
to get rid of Carl because he is different than what they are used to. Ed Bloom offers to go and talk to him
and while he is there he figures out that they can both leave together because
Ed has wanted to leave their town for a long time. Ed Bloom gets along with Carl because he sees the good in
people and does not judge Carl because he is different looking than most people
in their town. Edward is eager to
face a change in his life and that’s what makes him so creative and open to
others. Ed takes a different
approach when he goes to Carl because he looks at the world in a brighter light
than most people in Big Fish.
Ed Bloom makes friends with many of the outcasts in the
movie, but another one of the main people that made an impact in his life was
Jenny. Jenny was the witch as well
as the young girl who later in the movie we got to see as an old lady. Jenny was drawn to Ed the minute that
he arrived to Spectre. When Ed
decided that he was going to leave Spectre, Jenny made sure that he was going
to come back and visit them. Even
though, Ed’s wife Sandra was the most important woman in his life, Jenny had a
strong connection with Ed.
Some other people that Ed was able to make friends with was
the circus crew. Ed lived with the
circus crew and worked with them for a little bit because he wanted to learn
facts about his future love Sandra.
Ed Bloom was very different from the characters that we see in Tim
Burton’s movies as he was able to get along with all these different people and
search for a romantic companionship, as well as, live in a suburban town and
reach out from it.
Maggie, you bring up a really great point when you talk about Jenny. When I was writing my blog post, I did not realize the outcast aspect of Jenny’s character. Now that I am thinking about it, Jenny is different than the other members of Spectre’s community because she is the one person in the town who was not happy that Ed Bloom came back to fix up the town. Because of this, she halted the restoration efforts by Ed to bring the town back to its former glory. Jenny had waited her whole life for Ed to come back to Spectre, but when she finds out that Ed is now happily married and has no romantic interest in her, her heart is crushed, and it causes her character to become an outcast. This not the typical way in which Burton uses the outcast character, but it is very refreshing to see the character presented in this way.
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