The Fisher King

If there is a unifying link between the greatest performances of the late Robin Williams it is sudden death. Oh and outrageous comedic characterisation of course. Which makes two links. The two unifying links between the varied great performances of the late Robin Williams are sudden death, outrageous comedic characterisation and improvisation. Argh, that’s three. I’ll go out and come back in again.

Yes, I did steal from Monty Python’s ‘The Spanish Inquisition’ sketch. I did so knowingly as for me the pinnacle of Williams’ movie career, a film which encapsulates all three of the above elements, was directed by Terry Gilliam who appears in said Python sketch. The Film is Gilliam’s 1991 masterpiece, The Fisher King.

Ostensibly a vehicle for the superb Jeff Bridges, the show is nonetheless stolen by the increasingly important character of Parry played with almost Mork-like other-worldliness by Williams. Bridges plays Jack Lucas, a loudmouth shock jock whose challenging approach to a regular freakish phone-in caller prompts the caller to enter a Manhattan bar  and indiscriminately murder several yuppies. Lucas, horrified that his casually dismissive outpourings could inspire such horror slides into alcoholism and despair.

Three years later, intending to kill himself, Lucas heads for a dingy part of New York but before he can take his own life he is set upon by a gang of thugs who intend to set fire to him. Rescue comes in the shape of a homeless man, Parry, who later confides in Lucas that he is on a mission to find The Holy Grail. Parry wants to recruit the reluctant former DJ who only agrees when he realises that Parry is actually the widower of a woman who had been killed in the Manhattan murders.

A Grail Quest set in the heart of late twentieth-century New York is pure Gilliam, naturally, but the credence lent by Williams to a character obsessed with the fable of The Fisher King (an Arthurian style myth which was at the time being re-appropriated into certain psychological readings of the male archetype) is what allows the plot to truly fly. Well, that and some superb cinematography, with the scene of countless commuters waltzing through Grand Central Station serving as a perfect metaphor for the powerful attraction Parry has allowed himself to feel for Lydia, a shy accountant who is as yet unaware of Parry’s affections for her.

Lucas believes that he can settle his own conscience if he helps Parry and sets up a date with Lydia. Things seem to go well until Parry is visited by a recurrent hallucinatory presence throughout the movie, the Red Knight. In running to escape his tormentor, Parry encounters the same gang who had attacked Lucas and is beaten unconscious. He falls into a catatonic state in hospital, an echo of the self-induced psychological catatonia he had suffered after the murder of his wife.

Unable to rid himself of a sense of responsibility, Lucas uses Parry’s plans to locate the ‘Grail’ which is in reality a trophy kept in the house of a wealthy city businessman. He breaks into the businessman’s house, steals the trophy and brings it to the hospital. The Fisher King, re-established on his God-given quest to guard the Grail wakes up becoming something of a hybrid of his earlier days and the freer spirit of his time as a homeless man.

When the movie was made it is doubtful anyone but Williams could have captured the duality and insanity of Parry’s character so successfully. Indeed, the casting throughout is incredible, from Bridges to Amanda Plummer as Lydia to Mercedes Ruehl as the big-hearted woman who takes the broken former DJ into her life. The film also boasts a fine cameo from Tom Waits as a wounded Vietnam veteran beggar doubling as  a kind of Tiresian seer.

Without Williams at the heart of the movie, however, it is doubtful the end result would be so entirely satisfying. His presence adds extra effect to the fact that, unusually for Gilliam films at the time, the conclusion is unambiguously hopeful, even happy.

There is of course a notorious scene in which a naked Robin Williams flops his genitalia around in Central Park in the middle of the night, ‘setting the little fellow free’ as he puts it. Now I have always loved the man, pretty much been in love with him since first seeing him as insane alien Mork on the small screen, yet the sight of his naked body did not make me question my own sexuality in the way, perhaps, a nude Paul Newman might have done when he was in his prime.

What The Fisher King does make the discerning viewer question, however, is the alleged progress humankind has made since the so-called Dark Ages. For all that modern science and technology has allowed us to believe we understand and control our world and our lives so much more effectively than any feudal subjects could have done, The Fisher King proves that we are still just victims of happenstance and prone to holding on to any form of illogical belief system in the desperate hope that it can provide meaning within a frequently meaningless existence.

It is one of my Desert Island Films (why hasn’t some TV executive seen the need to expand this radio format onto our talking picture boxes?) and now carries increased poignancy and pathos because of the tragic death of Robin Williams, apparently at his own hands. Who will guard the Grail now? Or lead us in rousing renditions of ‘How About You? which are no match for Sinatra in terms of pitch and timbre but beat him  hands down when it comes to gusto and fun. Who else but Williams can ever again combine the allegedly oppositional roles of King and Fool so successfully? It is enough to make me want to taketh myself to the off license, and purchase ye Jacketh of Daniels so that I may get shitfaced.