MARCH 20, 2026 IN REVIEW The Fisher King (1991) STEVEN Groundcover vendor No. 668 Terry Gilliam’s fourth movie, “The Fisher King,” premiered in September 1991. It was the first he directed that he hadn’t written. More sedate in its surrealism than “Brazil” (1985), grounded in real-world New York instead of the fantasy world of “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen” (1988), it is still every bit a Terry Gilliam film. Grossing $72 million worldwide on a $24 million budget, it was considered a hit for Tri-Star Pictures that year and was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Actor for Robin Williams and Best Supporting Actress for Mercedes Ruehl, who won the Oscar. Why write a review of a 35-year-old film? Because its themes of trauma, mental illness, healing and redemption are timeless. On the surface, this seems to be a movie about homelessness and class warfare. When it came out, I was in high school and I absolutely loved it. I’ve watched it several times over the years, but this most recent watch-through landed very differently for me, now that I have experienced homelessness, been diagnosed with mental illness and have become more aware of the reality of class warfare in our country. It does contain those elements, but they are the framework to hang the Arthurian story of The Fisher King on. The film draws from this tale of a cursed, wounded king who is healed when Percival sees his humanity and asks the critical question of what ails him. Percival sees him not as a cursed king, but as a man in need of aid. The difficulty of seeing people for who they are, not how they present, challenges pretty much every character in this film. The human need to be seen, the unspoken requirement to be “valid enough” to be seen, rings deep with me now that I have been that unseen guy sitting on the sidewalk. Gilliam, as usual, weaves threads of metaphor throughout. Pinocchio shows up often in the film, alluding to the journey Jack Lucas (Jeff Bridges) makes from a wooden narcissist to a fully realized, caring, empathetic human. Jack is a broken ex-shock jock working in his girlfriend’s video store. Early in the film, Jack has a drunken conversation with a Pinocchio doll, quoting Nietzsche and identifying himself as part of the “bungled and the botched," the expendable masses. Jack is broken because three years earlier, a caller to his then-hit radio show asked him for advice with a woman the caller had met at a hip new club. Jack rebuffed the caller, calling yuppies sub-human and saying “they must be stopped." The caller went on to open fire on an upscale restaurant, killing six people and himself. Now three years later, Jack is hyper-focused on how the tragedy has affected him. He straps bricks to his legs and drunkenly readies himself to jump into the East River, when he is attacked by a couple of psycho bros who douse him in gasoline to light him on fire. Jack is saved by Parry (Robin Williams) acting as an “errant knight,” with help from people who are portrayed as homeless weirdos. The next day Jack learns Parry’s story from a building super who lets Parry live in his boiler room. Parry’s real name is Henry Sagan, and he was a college professor dining out with his wife when Jack’s shooter attacked, killing her. After a period of catatonia, Henry awakened as Parry, a knight on a quest for the Holy Grail. Jack, gobsmacked by the story, returns home to his girlfriend Anne’s (Mercedes Ruehl) apartment above her video store. Ruehl’s portrayal of the long-suffering romantic, waiting patiently for Bridges’ Jack to figure out his pain, is a shining performance in a film full of dazzling performances. Jack becomes convinced if he helps Parry he will somehow be absolved of his guilt. He tries giving him money, which Parry promptly gives away. Parry insists he needs Jack to help him retrieve the Grail from a billionaire's house on the Upper East Side. Jack refuses to help Parry break into the mansion, and when he tries to push Parry into seeing “reality,” we encounter The Red Knight, a fire-spewing mounted knight, for the first time. This is a trauma-induced hallucination of Parry’s, and its design 100% fits Gilliam’s brilliant aesthetic. Jack soon learns that Parry is in love with a woman he doesn’t know. They follow her, something Parry has done often. It's presented as romantic, not creepy, a tricky distinction to make through my 2026 lens, but after all, it is a fairy tale. Jack hits upon a plan to try to get Parry the girl, thinking if he does this he might be absolved of his guilt. Jack and Anne contrive to get Lydia, played deftly by Amanda Plummer, into their video store so she and Parry can meet. During a charming scene of the four main characters having dumplings, Parry and Lydia hit it off. After a sweet end-of-the-date exchange at a door stoop, Parry is again confronted by the Red Knight. He runs panicked through the city, tormented by flashbacks of his deceased wife and his hospitalization; with his too-large suit coat reminiscent of a straitjacket. He ends up on his knees by the river where he rescued GROUNDCOVER NEWS 15 Pinocchio painting Jeff Bridges made and gave to Robin Williams. Jack, with the Red Knight bearing down on him. Outside his delusion, the two punks who had attacked Jack reappear to attack Parry while he’s in his fugue. They beat and cut him, putting him in the hospital. Not knowing what has happened to Parry and feeling pretty pleased with himself the day after the date, Jack reaches out to his agent looking to revamp his career. He breaks up with Anne to “focus on his career.” During the breakup fight, they get a call about Parry in the hospital. He's in a catatonic state that could be permanent, caused by his mental trauma, not his injuries. Jack's shaken, but his career is already reset. The third act ends with Jack in a meeting for a TV show. The pitch is about some happy-go-lucky homeless guys, and a switch flips in Jack. He goes to see Parry at the hospital. Bridges crushes a heartfelt monologue, explaining to the catatonic Williams about how, if he gets the Grail cup, it will be because he cares about Parry. His arc is complete. He cares about others now. As I mentioned I’ve loved this movie since it came out in the 90s. I love it even more now. As a teen and 20-something I loved the craft of the film-making and thought the direction the characters came from was “pretty cool.” Watching it now I still, even more so, appreciate the craft of it but now I’ve met these characters, I’ve been these characters. On this rewatch I had, early on, a negative knee-jerk reaction to the portrayal of the homeless people but was quickly dissuaded from this. It's not meant to be a documentary of the plight of the homeless but it does paint a stylized image of what that might look like. Parry’s portrayal of a disassociated schizophrenic that is made all better because his delusion is realized does a bit of disservice to our profoundly mentally ill people who don’t get an all-better button but again that's not the point. As the saying goes “It’s the journey, not the destination.” (Someone to help can make all the difference.) It’s about all the characters' journeys from broken to less broken. This is a movie about love, redemption and challenging our bougie echo-chamber preconceived notions. Not just homelessness. Not just mental illness. I found this streaming for free with no ads on Youtube. Absolutely worth a watch.
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