Release Year: 1991 Rating: R Duration: 137 minutes Director: Terry Gilliam Producer: Debra Hill, Lynda Obst
synopsis
Jack Lucas (Jeff Bridges), a self-obsessed shock jock who thinks he has it all, is about to hit rock bottom. The cult personality spends his time on the radio insulting and berating his listeners, but when one caller takes Jack's advice literally and shoots up a New York City hotspot, Jack is sent swirling down into a depression that has him suicidal three years later. However, he is rescued out of the night by a different kind of knight in shining armor--a homeless man named Parry, played fabulously by Robin Williams, who thinks he's on a quest for the Holy Grail, which he believes to be in a Fifth Avenue town house. Parry serves as the living embodiment of Jack's guilt--Parry's beloved wife was killed in the nightclub massacre. Jack soon becomes conviced that by helping Parry he will also wind up helping himself, so he tries to help Parry win his lady love (Amanda Plummer), at the expense of risking his own relationship with Anne (Mercedes Ruehl, in an Academy Award-winning role), who has stood by his side during his downward spiral. Terry Gilliam's romantic parable THE FISHER KING is yet another visually stunning work from a master filmmaker, with a different kind of heart from Gilliam's other films, delving deep into the nature of love and loss, of guilt and redemption, of character and tragedy. Featuring a terrific cast and unusual locations for a fantasy story (New York City, brilliantly photographed by Roger Pratt), THE FISHER KING is both an exciting adventure and a charming romance.
I really wish they would make more films like THE FISHER KING. Movies these days seem to have lost sight of one of the most unique aspects of visual storytelling: its capacity to portray dreams and fantasy. That's not to say that movies don't ever stretch the boundaries of reality any more, but they do so cynically and cheaply, littering the screenplay with enough tongue-in-cheek one-liners so everyone can just relax. "Of course we don't *really* want you to think that a giant asteroid is going to hit the earth," filmmakers seem to be saying, "but it sure is fun to watch, isn't it?" Even Steven Spielberg, who brought such extraordinary stories as CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND and E.T. to our screens, has now tuned his sensibilities either to fantasies that are essentially negative and destructive, as in THE LOST WORLD, in which dinosaurs are brought to life only so they can chase people around and kill them, or to big-budget historical re-creations (not to take anything away from SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, of course, but the point's the same).
