The Fisher King

Continuing my look at the films of 1991...

The Fisher King was made in a time when homelessness was still a major news story. Of course it is still a problem, but in the Reagan era it mushroomed to ridiculous heights, especially in New York City, where panhandling and aggressive behavior by some homeless made the division between haves and have nots even stronger. It was also the time when the word yuppie was tossed about, usually with a sneer, even by people who were themselves yuppies.

The Fisher King is a film that reminds us that every homeless person has a story. The story told here is a doozy. Jeff Bridges plays Jack Lucas, a radio personality very much in the mold of Howard Stern. He makes a remark to a caller suggesting yuppies need to be wiped out. The caller takes him up on it, and walks into an upscale watering hole with a shotgun, killing seven people. One of them is the wife of a English professor, Robin Williams. This incident has a dual effect on our protagonists--Bridges is so overwhelmed by guilt that he ends his radio career and works at a video store, where he is a sort of kept man by the owner, Mercedes Ruehl. The death of Williams' wife drives him into catatonia, and then into the streets, where he thinks he is a knight of medieval lore.

The two men meet and help each other heal their wounds. It's interesting to see that director Terry Gilliam, who was one of the directors of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, returns to the subject of medieval knights, but in an entirely different perspective. Williams, who was Oscar-nominated, brings his usual unbundled mania to the role, when it is Bridges who really should have been nominated, as his performance is much more layered and subtle. Ruehl won the supporting actress Oscar as a woman who is in love with a man despite all his faults.

Gilliam and screenwriter Richard LaGravanese are to be commended for not taking this story into the mawkish and sentimental. The film occasionally borders on the sticky, but doesn't go too far. There's a scene in Grand Central Station, when Williams is watching the woman he fancies, in which everyone around her begins waltzing. This sounds bad, but actually is quite magical to watch. There's also a terrific moment when Michael Jeter, who plays a homeless drag queen, serenades someone with selections from Gypsy while wearing a red dress and wig. Another moment that works, even though it has no right to.