I just got done watching this and of course I loved it. But I just gotta know. Was the old man full of crap or did that stuff really happen? I mean the twins, Danny DeVito, Karl, Jenny, and Steve Buscemi were all there at the end. So obviously they were real. But did all that stuff happen?
shareYes, it did happen. Just not as intriguingly as he claimed.
shareThere are many instances of stories being obviously untrue. The twins not being conjoined is one, as is the reveal of "the witch".
That being said, focusing on what was "real" and what was not would be making the same mistake the protagonist originally does.
He never said the twins were "conjoined" he said they were Siamese AKA from Thailand.
shareYes, the stories happened, but with a lot of embellishment. It's just a question of how much of the story was true and how much was not.
MM
Probably vaguely based on real events. I think he likes to maintain a child-like sense of wonder about the world and that this is how he truly wants to remember things. Plus he seems to just like to spin a good yarn.
shareIt was just exaggerated. That's the whole point. His dad always exaggerated stuff. They prolly all went visit him but it wasn't as extravagent as his son made it sound.
I try to be like Grace Kelly, but all her looks were too
The dad never exaggerated stuff, it's the son who embellished the stories in his mind. Everything the dad said turned out to be true.
shareWe find, at the end, that these people did exist in Edward's life in one form or another, just as we learn earlier that he was MIA and presumed dead. And as his wife tells Will, not all of his stories were made up.
It's not out of the question to believe he worked for a time in a circus. But Edward can't help embellishing stories. He's creating his own personal oral history, and he embellishes it with each retelling. The fact that Will has heard the stories so often, he's bored with them and can't believe any part of them, is part of the point. He feels he doesn't know his father because of these tall tales, but he doesn't realize it's the over-the-top part of the stories that truly define his father. He's a storyteller and a crowd-pleaser; just the opposite of Will, who, if I remember correctly, works for a news service. Will is a journalist, documenting facts and writing "stories" to reflect what happened. Edward is an ambitious traveling salesman, with big dreams and big plans. His way of documenting his life is more colorful, but that doesn't mean none of what he says is true. As he says to Will, "I've been myself from the day I was born; if you can't understand that, it's your problem, not mine."
What I find very interesting is the way Edward's wife accepts him and his fantastical stories. She, more than anyone, would know what was true and what wasn't, but she also knows she isn't going to change Edward by challenging him. She smiles and accepts his stories as who he is, and as being what makes him the man she loves.
the whole message of the movie is "you have to fill your own colors to the ordinary events to make them colorful"
share"the whole message of the movie is "you have to fill your own colors to the ordinary events to make them colorful""
The whole message of the movie is "you are the center of the universe so lie if it is necessary, but get everyone attention on you"
I feel there is an issue with Ed's stories aside from exactly how truthful they are. It's that he never shuts up! A prime example is when Will and his wife are eating with his parents and they start talking about the traveling Josephine does for her job. Ed immediately launches into some monologue about the Congo, after which Will says, "Josephine has been there." And oblivious Ed says to her, "then you know,"
Josephine politely smiles, but that scenes shows to me that Ed is always about hogging the attention. If I had met Will and Josephine socially and it got mentioned that she travels a lot for her work, I would have asked her to tell me about that, and I would have listened. Not Ed: anything someone says is a cue for him to go into some story. Ed comes across as an egomaniac who has no interest in other people. I frankly can see why Will was so fed up with him.
Which doesn't take away from the power of the ending, in which before his father dies, Will embraces the things about his father that previously drove him nuts.
You must be the change you seek in the world. -- Gandhi
...one of the many points of the story is that Edward Bloom was in fact narcissistic. And the scene you named in particular is a key example of this fact. That's the factor that makes William's initial gripe towards the beginning of movie as legitimate as it is.
Stealing the show, Ed Bloom is a gregarious narcissist who apparently cannot help himself.
I'm not a control freak, I just like things my way
Seems to me that Ed is a salesman, used to taking small benefits of a product and making you think they are big benefits. He is used to holding your attention until he makes the sale. He is used to allowing you to speak only long enough to keep you interested in his sales pitch. Ed is selling his life story, taking small events and making them large events. He is selling himself, not in the sense of selling out, but making you like him. As in many sales pitches he overdoes it sometimes. One of the questions is who is Ed's customer, his son or himself?
The son rejects the sales pitch as a sham and a scam. The son is massively disappointed that his father is not a super hero and becomes convinced, therefore that he is a villain. This is a journey that most children take. He finds out that there are no absolutes, that not being the best in the universe doesn't mean you are the worst in the universe. He finds that his father is not a super hero, but not a charlatan. His father was a man, who sometimes succeeded, some times failed, was tempted and some times resisted temptation and sometimes maybe not, but he loved his wife and son, worked his butt off to provide a nice life for them. In the end his father needs his help, he realizes that he has to become the superhero and a bit of a charlatan, and that someday he will be on the other end of this kind of story, and some day he will need his own son's help, or at least respect. And part of the tension is whether he will realize in time, or realize too late what the right thing to do is. Because this is a movie it all works out, but in real life not always.
lou
Thanks Lou. Enjoyed your considered post. Helped me understand the film more.
shareHe was full of inventiveness and creativity and a fanciful way of looking at life. Some people are natural story-tellers and take their own mundane experiences in life and embellish them both to entertain others, but also to entertain themselves. Other people grow impatient with fanciful details that aren't 100% factual.
I think of my Dad, who liked to be entertaining and would tell anecdotes to make people laugh, and my Mom, who continues to be proud that she "has no sense of humor" and takes everything in life very seriously ~~ and very literally.
It takes all kinds...