A tiny blip in the continuum

I did not think I would enjoy Big Fish when I first heard about it. But I was wrong. And gladly so too.

Having since seen it, I felt my preconceived notions about the film were simply wrong. For, beneath the Burtonesque sense of adventure, humor and oddball characters lies a simple and touching story of a father and a son.

There is tension and misunderstanding between them; Will the son grows increasingly frustrated at his perpetually fibbing father Edward, of whom he feels he does not know at all, what with the latter’s propensity to spin tall, fantastical tales of his younger days.

WILL
I am a footnote in that story. I am the context
for your great adventure. Which never happened!
Incidentally!

EDWARD
Come on, Will. Everyone likes that story.

WILL
No Dad, they don’t. I do not like the story. Not
anymore, not after a thousand times. I know all
the punchlines, Dad. I can tell them as well as
you can.
(closer)
For one night, one night in your entire life, the
universe does not revolve around Edward Bloom.
How can you not understand that?

WILL
(in voiceover)
After that night, I didn’t speak to my father again
for three years.

The father has fallen ill, and even as time is slowly but surely running out for Will, he remains reticent about accepting his father for who he is. The film ends on a bittersweet note. Yet it is able to lift your spirit, to elicit the laughter from behind the tears.

The passing is inevitable, and the reconciliation between father and son is somewhat stilted, an overdue on the son’s part. Too little, too late; Will must have recognized that.

I know I did.

I cried.

I thought about my father and I. About our journey, from how I was the inquisitive little boy to him who never seemed to be without a question, to how I am the young man to him today, seemingly misunderstood and definitely distanced by the growing years. By geography, by the loss of innocence, and by circumstances we were not in control of.

EDWARD
You think I’m fake.

WILL
Only on the surface. But that’s all I’ve ever seen.

My father is a man of traditional beliefs and values. Never a man who felt it appropriate to talk about his feelings, he remains a stoic person for as long as my siblings and I can remember, even when he is capable of being gregarious and humorous. We know him only on the surface; what lies beneath he never made it known.

Lately, when I went through my music collection, I rediscovered Man of the Hour, a quiet, moving song Pearl Jam wrote specially for the film after they were given a private screening of it.

And the doors are open now
as the bells are ringing out
Cos the man of the hour
has taken his final bow
Goodbye for now

I listened to the words and I thought about us again.

And about what I felt when I returned from my recent trip back home. About the quiet shock at realizing how much my parents – my father especially – have aged, and how the past decade – stormy and defeating – had taken its toll on him; the raven of his hair, jet black and full only a short year ago, now gray and thinning, and the lines on his face now even more pronounced. I felt a growing urgency to spend more time with him, with them.

And the road, the old men paved
the broken seams along the way
The rusted signs, they’re just for me
He was guiding me
Love, his own wayNow the man of the hour
has taken his final bow
As the curtain comes down
I feel that this is just
Goodbye for now

Then I thought about the promise I made to my parents when I was a boy. That, when I grow up, I would find them a house by the sea for them to live in for the rest of their days.

Suddenly the urgency has never seemed more pressing.