Big Fish, at its core, is simply a story about a father's relationship with his son. But what makes the film unique, and what some viewers find confusing is Tim Burton's method of creative storytelling using a fractured timeline narrative.
Upon receiving a call that his father has suffered a stroke, Will Bloom rushes to his parent's home to be by his father's side. In his emotional reckoning, Will begins to realize that he has always had a hard time connecting with his father, Edward. Through a series of flashbacks and continuum jumps, we learn that what Will always thought was a bunch of lies and "fish tales" he had been told all of life, was actually his father's unique way of telling Will what a rich and fulfilling life he was living.
All throughout his life, Will's father has spun these amazing tales of giants, witches, Siamese Twins, mind-blocked poets, wolf-like circus performers and Catfish that can't be caught. It's not until the end of the movie, at his father's funeral, that we see all of these imaginary people and beings in one place. However, they don't appear as they did in the wild tales. We see that they are actually ordinary people who were his father's friends. Most have unique traits, but for the most part they are just ordinary people.
Will is enlightened to the fact that his father was a great man when he pays a visit to one of his father's old friends. The point at which the audience gets its first hint of Will's acceptance and understanding of his father, was when Will himself, upon his father's deathbed, actually begins to spin a yarn in his father's grand style. Will steals his father from the hospital, throws him into his hot red GTO, tears through the city streets and carries him to the river where his father turns into a giant fish when released in the water. The fact that Will himself would tell one of these wild stories, was an indicator that he finally understood his father and that he finally realized he actually knew his father all along.
So what unfolded before us were the embellished stories about him and his friends that Edward Bloom had always told to his son. Every story probably had a little truth to it, like the fact that he served in the military during war; and that he worked for a circus; and that he knew he would eventually marry the girl he met at a circus. But Edward always embellished the stories to the point that Will never knew what was the truth and what was fiction.
Edward probably lived a fairly uneventful life and was probably rather insignificant in the grand scheme of the world. But as the movie wraps, each audience member is reminded that no matter how insignificant we think our contribution is to society, our family and friends are what make us rich.
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