The Fisher King [DVD]

What do you expect from a Terry Gilliam film? Something inventive, an entertaining but thought-provoking take on the human condition? A meaningful story shot with the imagination and cheerful dismissal to reality, which ironically brings the movie closer to home?

I saw 'Brazil' a few months ago, and didn't think cinema could get any better. I bought 'Fisher King' with the expectation that it would be good, but dominated by the huge personalities of Robin Williams and Jeff Bridges. I didn't expect anything close to what I'd seen in 'Brazil'. But, contrary to what I'd expected the big on-screen personalities work in perfect harmony to this wacky world Gilliam presented us with.

A perfect script, a perfect cast, a perfect director. Perfect.

Terry Gilliam's films are always worth catching, and this is my favourite of them all. The story of redemption and triumph over tragedy makes this the most poignant of the fantastic stories that Gilliam has told in his unique cinematic way.

Like The Shawshank Redemption, this film is a treasure many never heard of upon it's release, or if they did, seem to have forgotten. Starring the almost demonic Jeff Bridges as Jack Lucas, a 'shock jock' who blames himself for inciting a listener to murder, the story catches up with him as his drunken self-loathing leads him to the brink of suicide. Enter Robin Williams as Parry, a seemingly unhinged tramp, whose decline was triggered by the death of his wife in the shootings Jack feels responsible for. The pair battle together for each other's sanity in a tale that encompasses Arthurian myth, knights on horseback in central park, and love blossoming in chinese restaurants.

While emotionally wrenching at times, this is still a beautiful, whimsical, and even very funny journey, with the price of entry justified by the real story of the Fisher King that Parry tells Jack in central park alone.

You'll laugh, cry, and swear off eating dumplings in public, but this is a small price to pay, as is the cost of the title. Even if Monty Python was never your thing, and Twelve Monkeys was just too sci-fi for your taste, still this film deserves a place in everyone's collection.

No one could accuse Terry Gilliam of being conventional. Understatement of the year, I realise, but when you really look at this film and its message(s) there is ultimately quite a simple premise at work - the triumph of altruism over ego. Both Parry and Jack are forced to over-come this by the same hideous event while Jack's poor wife remains the staunch figure of altruism (sometimes despite herself) throughout.
That said, the manner in which this is conveyed is typical Gilliam - visual metaphors illuminate the screen at every turn, dazzling the audience no matter what the focus of the scene may be. It is, put simply, the clearly recongisable work of one of the few contemporary film-makers who truly deserve the tag "auteur" - each and every shot kind of grimy but colourful at the same time. Every character somewhat unusual yet played with a sense of warmth. If you are a fan, you will know what I mean.
Jeff Bridges turns in (as usual) an amazing performance - by turns arrogant, and pathetic (sometimes both) as does Williams who is his usual manic self but delivered with the kind of pathos that he would come to use in later films such as One Hour Photo. Really, though, it is Mercedes Ruell as Jack's long-suffering wife who brings the whole film together. Her perpetually nasal (deliberately so, of course) New York whine complementing her tortured character's attempts to rehabilitate her husband and stand by him no matter what happens - or how he treats her.
The film is, like so many (particularly another favourite of mine It's A Wonderful Life) loosely branded "soppy", actually pretty dark - its sentimentality having been drawn out of tragedy and the manner in which people cope with it. Ok, so the fact that it is coped with via the central character undertaking a mystical mission may seem a little trite - but if you recognise that this really is a symptom of mental illness (in the character of Parry) then you may start to recognise just how interesting and important - certainly not soppy - this film is.
Oh, and Robin Williams may have sullied his reputatation by starring in one-too-many sugary feel-good films, but this isn't one of them. Those who dislike him on that basis alone should sit down and watch this, perhaps followed by The World According to Garp and maybe some of his early stand-up and re-assess their opinions......