← Back to Reviews
in
Big Fish and Begonia, 2016
Chun is a girl living in some sort of spiritual realm underneath the Earth who has reached the age where she gets to travel to the surface for a short time in the form of a dolphin. But when she is trapped in a net in her dolphin form, a human boy dives into the water to save her, only to drown in the process. Grief-stricken, Chun makes a bargain with a soul collector, discovering that she must care for the boy's soul in the form of an ever-growing fish that she names Kun. Chun's actions, though, have serious consequences for her world and only a young man named Qiu is willing to help her in her quest.
If I had seen this movie when I was a kid, it probably would have bowled me over. The story is intense and complicated, and the visuals are really fantastic.
Coming at it now, though, as someone who has seen a decent amount of animation, I was a bit underwhelmed by this film. I found the narrative and character development a bit scattershot and much of the animation felt derivative of other movies.
Something that is fundamentally striking about this film is the way that its narrative focus kind of turns out to be in the wrong place. Surely, you think, the focus is on Chun and the big fish. You know, like in the title? But the most compelling character stuff comes from Qiu, who is secretly in love with Chun and, unbeknownst to her, goes to tremendous lengths to protect her and help her succeed in her mission. It's a movie full of sacrifice, but largely from characters around the main figures.
I found myself repeatedly wishing that Kun had more of a personality. Yes, he gets a lot of the usual anthropomorphic cute animal beats. But at the end of the day, he's just kind of a big fish. We know that Chun wants to save him. And we understand that he was selfless in giving his life to rescue what he simply believed to be a dolphin in distress. But I was never entirely clear on whether the big fish WAS the boy, or just some manifestation of his spirit. Chun herself also didn't entirely grip me as a character. She was too often frustratingly passive or hesitant, and I didn't feel that she grew as the film went on.
And while this may be a matter of cultural ignorance on my part, I found some of the world-building a bit confusing. There are human-looking spirits who aren't human, but they live with non-human-looking spirits. Then there are souls of humans, only they can only be in certain places. The good people go this way, the bad people turn into . . . spirit rats?
From a visual standpoint, the film has a lot to offer. I really loved a sequence in the soul keeper's house where it turns out that many of his items are actually transformed cats, so that with a wave of his hand a chair suddenly dissolves into five or six irritated cats. There's also some lovely imagery, like a whirlpool that is made of two water dragons.
But something that kept bothering me as I watched was the sense that many of the images were things I'd seen before. An image of flying whales that came right out of Fantasia, or creature design that seemed to owe a lot to certain sequences of Spirited Away. Again, the animation looks really good, but just felt overly familiar.
A good film, but not as strong or original as I'd hoped going in.
Big Fish and Begonia, 2016
Chun is a girl living in some sort of spiritual realm underneath the Earth who has reached the age where she gets to travel to the surface for a short time in the form of a dolphin. But when she is trapped in a net in her dolphin form, a human boy dives into the water to save her, only to drown in the process. Grief-stricken, Chun makes a bargain with a soul collector, discovering that she must care for the boy's soul in the form of an ever-growing fish that she names Kun. Chun's actions, though, have serious consequences for her world and only a young man named Qiu is willing to help her in her quest.
If I had seen this movie when I was a kid, it probably would have bowled me over. The story is intense and complicated, and the visuals are really fantastic.
Coming at it now, though, as someone who has seen a decent amount of animation, I was a bit underwhelmed by this film. I found the narrative and character development a bit scattershot and much of the animation felt derivative of other movies.
Something that is fundamentally striking about this film is the way that its narrative focus kind of turns out to be in the wrong place. Surely, you think, the focus is on Chun and the big fish. You know, like in the title? But the most compelling character stuff comes from Qiu, who is secretly in love with Chun and, unbeknownst to her, goes to tremendous lengths to protect her and help her succeed in her mission. It's a movie full of sacrifice, but largely from characters around the main figures.
I found myself repeatedly wishing that Kun had more of a personality. Yes, he gets a lot of the usual anthropomorphic cute animal beats. But at the end of the day, he's just kind of a big fish. We know that Chun wants to save him. And we understand that he was selfless in giving his life to rescue what he simply believed to be a dolphin in distress. But I was never entirely clear on whether the big fish WAS the boy, or just some manifestation of his spirit. Chun herself also didn't entirely grip me as a character. She was too often frustratingly passive or hesitant, and I didn't feel that she grew as the film went on.
And while this may be a matter of cultural ignorance on my part, I found some of the world-building a bit confusing. There are human-looking spirits who aren't human, but they live with non-human-looking spirits. Then there are souls of humans, only they can only be in certain places. The good people go this way, the bad people turn into . . . spirit rats?
From a visual standpoint, the film has a lot to offer. I really loved a sequence in the soul keeper's house where it turns out that many of his items are actually transformed cats, so that with a wave of his hand a chair suddenly dissolves into five or six irritated cats. There's also some lovely imagery, like a whirlpool that is made of two water dragons.
But something that kept bothering me as I watched was the sense that many of the images were things I'd seen before. An image of flying whales that came right out of Fantasia, or creature design that seemed to owe a lot to certain sequences of Spirited Away. Again, the animation looks really good, but just felt overly familiar.
A good film, but not as strong or original as I'd hoped going in.