Pescador de ilusiones

This movie is really exceptional in a lot of ways. It's got one of those plots, full of ironic reversals and personal struggle, that's been turned into melodramatic trash in every creative medium ever invented. With Robin Williams as the magic crazy guy and Jeff Bridges in an 80s ponytail, the ways the basic concept could have gone awry (in other hands) are truly frightening to contemplate. But with Terry Gilliam at the helm, The Fisher King speaks to your emotions more directly and powerfully than 90% of the movies out there without degenerating into sappiness.

Perhaps the most brilliant acheivement of this movie is the way it takes Robin Williams' crazy-improvisational persona and makes it an integral part of the story. Instead of being a tacked-on adjunct to the "real" movie, Williams' stream-of-consciousness patter is essential to the work as a whole.

At the same time, Gilliam is making an almost-mainstream movie for the first time in his career, while explicitly referencing his past (the Holy Grail). It all comes together into a movie you will never forget.

Family film night and Sarah Erwin Jones. Choice but she was cajoled a bit by me to pick this over The Piano (which will be viewed shortly). The Grand Central scene alone makes this essential viewing. A fantastical exploration of Arthurian legend, Ethel Merman and the fragility of mental health. Jeff Bridges and Robin Williams are stunning with William's performance all the more poignant in light of his own personal demons. Mercedes Ruehl deservedly took the best supporting actress Oscar but Amanda Plummer also excels. Despite the fantasy world Terry Gilliam has never directed such vivid relationships on screen. A gem.

Deep humanism runs through the veins of this film from Terry Gilliam, and in some ways it reminded me of old Hollywood and Frank Capra. Its treatment of the homeless and people suffering mental illness because of trauma is highly sympathetic, and in working in fantasy and romantic comedy elements, the film has a light, magical air to it. Jeff Bridges plays an unpleasant radio DJ and Robin Williams is the homeless man whose world was shattered because of something the DJ broadcast, and they're both brilliant here. Mercedes Ruehl and Amanda Plummer play their love interests, and they're fantastic as well - but Michael Jeter nearly upstages them all as the homeless cabaret singer when he belts out a show tune in drag in an office space.

One of the things I liked most about the film was how it deals with charity. We see people throwing coins at homeless people without even looking at them, and a gift of big bills in a shallow attempt to atone for wrongdoing. The scene where Bridges' character says it's not his fault to Williams who can't respond is powerful, and such a metaphor for the affluent wrestling with guilt over those who've been trampled by life (for the rich who actually feel guilt anyway). True charity begins with true empathy, we see, and the giving that comes from immersing oneself into another person's world is divine.

There are some really sweet scenes here, many of which involve Robin Williams. That beautiful story of the fisher king while looking up at the stars, how he imagines everyone waltzing in Grand Central Station because the woman he's secretly in love with is walking across the floor, and the way he tries to offset her awkwardness at the Chinese restaurant are all touching. We get little bits of his comedy too, like when his character can't help himself from picking up a discarded bottle off a trash heap while walking on his first date.

The story takes a lot of twists and turns, and maybe a few too many, en route to what was probably an inevitable ending, but this is a good one. Now if only all radio talk show hosts who glibly said harmful things had to truly confront the consequences of their words.

The Fisher King can be viewed as an oddball dramedy like several others during one's initial viewing, but then suddenly you're struck by the hallucinations of Robin Williams's character, namely the sight of the large, outlandish, scorching red figure of a demonic knight coming to kill him. Things like this seem at once to throw the film out of balance a little bit, like the film is making a straight line and suddenly makes a sharp and brief stab upward, and then back down to continue the line in the straight way it was before. One has to think about The Fisher King and realize just how largely, outlandishly, scorchingly different it is. Think about this plot when you're watching the film. You'll realize how well it modestly unravels instead of contriving itself to mystify us. The filmmakers show no ego and are not interested in impressing themselves. They are telling their vivid, dynamic story the way good films are made. The story is just completely fresh and new. And with that in mind, thinking outside the box along with Terry Gilliam and Richard LaGravanese, one shouldn't even think of the brief sporadic fantasies the film splashes at us here and there as anything so jolting.

Jeff Bridges turns in a fantastic, despicably likable performance. I say this not so much because I believe he has a universal effect on anyone who understands or enjoys the movie. I say this more because I related to him greatly. I felt like his character was very familiar with his self-centered angst, bitterness lathered on top, an emotional and sexual nature quite like mine, and frankly the performance in a serious relationship quite like mine. Bridges, who I have always thought of as a very good actor, has my kudos for understanding to the point of successful portrayal a type of person who is rarely completely understood.

Robin Williams, constantly underrated at this point for his self-indulgent bombast and personally difficult, nonstop communication of his sense of humor, is proved in this, as well as several other films I could mention, that he has true talent and feels his characters to the very core and projects as such. It is not and never has been right to reduce judgment upon him to surprisingly shameless look-at-me-fests like Mrs. Doubtfire, Patch Adams, and Good Morning, Vietnam, because he has always been tremendously capable. Above all, I think he is an actor whose work is founded upon intuition. He communicates his physical and psychological portrayal by emotional understanding and deep feeling. When you watch this film, do you not have that clutching grip upon his character's pain? Are you not taking that journey face to face with him?

Mercedes Ruehl is not a token here. She is not just the voluptuous Brooklyn Jew girlfriend who nags, criticizes men, and makes dinner the whole time. That is the way her character lays out, because that is the path the emotional position of her presence in the story leads. She is perhaps the strongest, most decisive, and understanding person of all four main characters, and believably so. She is also very sexy and very natural. Take the scene with her and Bridges stumbling with laughter down the street after the dinner scene. She is quite real in a scene that with many other players would've been annoyingly not so.

Amanda Plummer is a sad portrait of a very realistic person, ironically enough in a film that is greatly surreal. She is the lone wolf that drifts through life, crippled by a complete lack of self-assurance and with age has become extremely used to it. Plummer's rich, seldom screen time is great, very wise acting. When she is suddenly accosted by the attention and adoration of these other three people, she reacts, and I feel like I know many people who would react the same way.

The Fisher King is in my opinion the first great film Terry Gilliam ever made. He had never made a bad film before this one, but this is the film that really made me connect. It's filled with emotional understanding of the human condition and a parallel story and cinematic style that are so acutely unique and naturally offbeat. It is among the definitive Gilliam films. Perhaps the click that sounded off for a truly effective film came with the connection of very similar, very compatible perspectives between the writer and the director. It's a determined, forceful, emotional, passionate, and secretive movie.

I've watched Robin Williams/Jeff Bridges in this "fairytale" more times than I count. Finally bought it. You have to watch it at least twice , in my opinion,because the first time all I could do was try to let it "settle in".

I love movies that hit me broadsided and then blind me! I keep trying to watch it with my daughter, who only likes love stories, but if I can keep her still long enough she'll find out that this IS a love story, of the most incredible kind. A love story for all mankind.

I hate to gush, but if it's ever called for, it's called for here.

The first time I saw it, I was soooooooo impressed with Mercedes Rhuel's performance and actually said to my friend in the theatre, "That woman's gonna get nominated for the Oscar for this performance", which of course she won for her performance. So, I'm not so unsophisticated after all.