Magic Realism in “Big”
I liked the film “Big” even before I knew Steven Spielberg’s sister helped write it.
“Big” is one of a small group of special films that help define “Magic Realism” for me, and in some ways, it is among the best of the best in that genre.
Magic realism for me tends to be subtle, giving us fiction where we either do not know if magic occurs at all or where we get a single magical thread that allows us to explore its impact on society.
Almost perfect examples of the first type are “The Fisher King,” “Miracle of 34th Street,” and “Harry” In these films, we want to believe that the magic exists, but find that the real magic is in the character’s willingness to believe.
“It’s a wonderful life,” “The Bishop’s Wife,” “Big” and recently, “Liar Liar” are examples of the second type. “Wonderful Life” and “Bishop’s Wife” explore the impact of an angel’s intervention with human kind. So the magic is very obvious. In both cases, the angel comes in response to a prayer for help.
“Big” and “Liar Liar” are more modern equivalents of those classic films having magic summoned to solve some great need.
Steven Spielberg’s efforts in magic realism include films such as “Hook” and “Always,” although neither has the lightness of touch Big offers.
While Woody Allen’s “Purple Rose of Cairo comes to close to my ideal for Magic Realism, he gets a little heavy handed in spots, spoiling the delicate balanced needed to make such a venture work. This is even more a flaw with similar efforts by Steve Martin.
Films like the Truman Show simply don’t work for me at all.
Where as Liar Liar sometimes goes over the top in performance, its presentation of magic remains subtle and this film to my mind is Jim Carey’s best effort.
“Liar Liar” and “Hook” are very similar in that they present us with irresponsible fathers who must be dragged through some magical experience to realize the error of their ways. In Hook, the kids are kidnapped and the father must go off to never never land to bring them back. In Liar Liar the child makes a wish that his father cannot lie for 24 hours and forces his father to deal with the world more honestly.
“Big” has a similar premise.
A boy, who is too young to get the girl he wants wishes he was “big” and through the efforts of an unplugged electronic fortunetelling machine, he gets his wish.
Like so many works connected with the Spielberg family, Big also fits with the mythological search for father since the father figure is so obviously missing, and this figure is realized later in the figure of the toy company president, who takes a liking to the hero.
Liar Liar and Big rise above other similar films because they take on themes of truth and innocence, and their relationship to the so called real world.
In Liar Liar we are confronted with questions such as: What if the legal profession was forced to be truthful? Would anybody believe it? How would an attorney function limited only to speaking the truth? And in the end, does truth equate to justice?
In Big, truth is used in a slightly different way – often reversing the concept of what it means to be an adult.
The main character is really only 13 years old and yet his behavior and world view tends to be more mature in some ways than the lying, scheming adults he comes into contact. Big has a powerful emotional impact because the boy must go back to being a boy and the women must go on with her life lacking even the cold comfort ambition. Liar Liar – except for the matter of what is justice – resolves its love story and we get something closer to the classic comic pattern in its happy ending.
I tend to watch Big and Liar Liar in sequence because each answers a different fundamental question inside me, about who I am and the nature of the world in which I live.
I am both the liar seeking truth and the little boy seeking bigness, and as in these films, both dreams remain unrealized though the quest makes for the remarkable experience called life.