Celebrating the film's 20th anniversary, The Big Blue by Luc Besson was screened in the 2008 TGHFF's Special Screening Programme. I don't know if the film was shown in Taiwan 20 years ago. After all, I was just a little boy at that time, struggling to grow up and had little sense of the world beyond home and school.

I do remember how I became aware of this film though. I was an avid collector of original movie scores during college. The film's score composed by Eric Serra was deemed by many collectors as a must-have. It caused me a fortune to include it into my collection because the CD had no local distributor--only imported version was available. Nevertheless, it was worth the price. Listing to the music was like fish swimming in the water, smooth and effortless.

Seeing the movie on the big screen was a mind-blowing experience. First of all, the extended version of the film ran at the length of 168 minutes. Sitting through the film was itself physically taxing--not to mention that I was just midway through my weekend film marathon. Second of all, the familiar score finally found its long lost images. The combination of two made a solid proof about why the film was played in France's theatres for over a year. Finally, a true classic film won't seem outdated after 20 years. The Big Blue definitely stands the test of time.